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Atari800MacX
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Printer Emulation
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The Printer Tab controls the type of printer emulation that is used
for outputting to the P: device from the emulated Atari.
Note,
that the P: Patch must be enabled on the Atari System Tab for this tab
to be active.
The are four choices for printer emulation, Text Printer, Atari 825,
Atari 1020, and Epson FX-80. The Text printer simply sends
the
printer output to a text file with optional script processing, while
the other three choices emulator a
legacy printer, and allow the user to save the printer output in a PDF
file. For information on setting printer options, see the Printer Tab of the Preferences pane. The current printer can be selected, and preview output opened, by either an entry in the Media Menu or by using the printer area in the Media Status Window.
The legacy printer emulations allow the user to preview what has been
printed to the printer so far. This preview is presented as a
pane which drops down from the main emulator window, and is shown
below. Besides previewing the output, there are controls that
allow the user to control the emulated printer and output

While the preview is open, the printer is offline, and the main emulator is paused. The printer comes back
online when the preview sheet is closed.
The preview shows the printed output on one or more pages of fanfold
paper. The length of one page can be chosen in the Printer tab of
the Preferences panel, and is 11 inches by default. Two purple
triangles, on the left and right hand side of the paper,
indicate the "current position"; this is where the next line of
output will appear. Breaks between the pages will appear as
dotted lines, simulating the perforations in fanfold paper. These
dotted lines will not appear in the output.
At the bottom of the sheet are several buttons:
- Leave in Printer: pressing this button closes the preview
sheet without affecting the output.
- Tear Off and Save: this button saves the print output in a pdf
file. It then clears the print output from the preview and closes
the sheet. So metaphorically this is like tearing off the fanfold
paper and storing the output in a safe place. After saving the output to a pdf file you can use Apple's Preview
program or Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the output or print it on a
real printer.
- Tear Off and Delete: this clears the output without saving it
and closes the sheet.
- LF: Line Feed, This will cause the current position of the printer to advance by one line.
- Rev LF: Reverse Line Feed, This will cause the current position of the printer to go back by one line.
- FF: Form Feed, This will cause the current position of the printer to advance to the top of the next page.
- Pen Change: This is only active for the Atari 1020 printer, and
will cause the printer to use the next pen color. The current pen
color in use is indicated by the color of the text in the button.
- Reset Printer: This is equivalent to power cycling the
emulated printer, reseting any control characters that may have been
sent by the emulated computer. It will also clear the print
output, start at the top of a blank page, and close the preview
window.
Text Printer
The Text Printer is used to send output to
a plain text file. The file will be stored in the default print
output directory, which is settable on the Directories Tab
of the Preferences window. The file name will be automatically
generated, and will be off the form SPOOL_xxxxx, where xxxxx is a
random character string picked by the program/OS. The file may
then be post-processed by a shell command, which is specified on the Printer Tab of the Preferences window. By default, the text file is opened in TextEdit.
Epson FX-80 Printer
The Epson FX-80 was a very popular printer in the 1980's, and is therefore supported by many Atari programs.
The emulation is intended to support all of the functions of the
original printer, such as different character pitches, bold, italic and
underlined text, margins, tabs, and graphic modes. It does not support user defined characters however. It does support
proportional printing well, as opposed to the Atari 825 emulation's
proportional print support, which is poor.
The technology used by the emulator for text rendering is very
different from the technology used in the original Epson. As a result,
the characters are somewhat different, but the size and looks of the
characters are just like the real thing,
Atari 1020 Printer/Plotter
The
Atari 1020 was a unique printer/plotter with color output, which was
rare in the day. The emulation is intended to support all of the
functions of the original printer, and even includes the additional
ability to change the colors of the 4 pens in the plotter.
Atari 825 Printer
The
Atari 825 was on of several standard Atari printers. It's
emulation is included here for use with early programs which might not
have had printer driver support for the Epson. The emulation is
intended to support all of the
functions of the original printer, however, proportional output on the
printer used a spacing which is not easily emulated with modern fonts,
so the output appearance is not optimal. It is strongly suggested
to use the Epson emulation for proportional text output instead.