[Coco] a not very important drivewire question

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Jul 17, 2014 11:33 AM, "Robert Gault" <robert.gault at att.net> wrote:
>
> Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>>
>> Fwiw, there are printer operations built into the protocol and an os9 /p
>> module that uses them so programs can print without needing modification.
>> I don't know if hdbdos makes print #-2 work in basic, but it could
probably
>> be done fairly easily if not.
>
>
> At the moment, it does not seem to work but that is probably an artifact
of DW4 not opening a file on the PC to receive the print data. When I open
a file in Becker VCC, then I can get PRINT#-2,"text" to work.
> How should we tell DW4 what file to open and if necessary to flush the
buffer? At the moment, PRINT#-2 and LLIST just freeze my Coco3 when using
DW-HDBDOS.
>

There are settings in the GUI and/or config.XML to define what happens.  By
default I believe it will create a new text file with random name in the
current directory when the flush operation is sent.  You can tell it what
directory or file to use, define commands to be executed after an print job
is received, tell it to render Epson printer codes into an image, and other
stuff too.  You can also have several different printer configs and then
switch between them using the GUI or the DW command.  I think it should be
flexible enough to accommodate most needs.

The flush command is a low level DW op code, as is the "here's some data to
print".  I'm not sure how HDBDOS would know when to send the flush op, do
programs actually open and close #-2?  I seem to recall its just always
there.  In os9 I think flush is sent when the handle to /p closes, not sure
if there is a good equivalent in basic.