N.B. This applies to viewing and all formats.
Your original source document was intended to be sent to a particular type of printer (such as HP-PCL or Adobe PS); 
EscapeE interprets the instructions in this document and represents it on your screen instead. The document file usually contains all the instructions necessary for the pages to be printed, but if they are absent, e.g. in a raw text file, the printer resorts to using 'default' parameters, and EscapeE is configured to cope with this. Experts using specialist systems may, however, have altered these defaults; in this case EscapeE must also be reconfigured to match:
| 1. | Choose Configuration... from the 'Options' menu (or press F8) then select the Printer tab. |
| 2. | Specify how page-breaks in the document are determined: |
| o | If emulating a printer, select a Paper size from the drop-down list. You may choose: |
| • | a standard paper size: the measurements will be entered in the width and height boxes automatically (select inches or centimeters as you prefer). Or |
| • | CUSTOM and enter the 'width X height' (in inches or centimeters) alongside. To retain the CUSTOM set-up for future use, remember to click Save instead of 'OK' on closing the dialog. Or |
| • | AUTO to use the paper-size specified in the document. |
| o | For a PCL or Epson file to emulate a line-printer: |
| • | set the page length as the number of lines per page and |
| • | select the line ending symbols from the drop-down list. (Try looking in the printer's menus, or print its 'test page' for this information.) |
| o | When emulating a plotter, each file defines a single 'page' and so these page-break defaults are ignored – see note below. |
| 3. | If the printer is required to start in HP-GL mode, i.e. to emulate a plotter rather than a printer, tick the Plotter check-box. |
| o | Click Plotter options... to configure plotter-specific options: see Plotter options. |
| 4. | If you are emulating an Epson dot matrix printer, select its resolution from one of these "dots-per-inch" values: |
| 5. | If you are emulating a spot color printer, choose an ink color from the drop-down list (Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow). A sample of the selected color is shown alongside.
Otherwise select <None> to set the color sample to black. (The default is to leave the box blank). |
| 6. | If the emulated printer is capable of printing to the edge of the paper, tick the Edge to edge printing. |
| 7. | Set up a default font selection sequence, e.g.
^(19U^(s0p12vsb3T |
| o | enter the string in the Font select edit-box or |
| 8. | Click the Save button to retain these settings after you close the program.
Alternatively, click OK to use them for the current session only. |
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If the file is known to be from a plotter then there is no need to set up a default paper size – the page is made big enough (maximum coordinate value is 8,388,607) to encompass the whole area of the plot. (The file is deemed to be from a plotter if the file extension is .PLT or .HPG or it starts with a plotter command rather than PCL or if the 'Plotter' box has been checked.)
For images, you may override print file setting for paper size so that, for example, a series of TIFFs read via a Control file can be forced to fit a particular paper size.
The document invokes custom paper size using {escape}&l101A.
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The printer which you use to print your document may not be the same as the original document was created to use, so you may need to set up some default parameters relating to your chosen output printer:
| 1. | Choose Configuration... from the 'Options' menu (or F8) then select the Printer tab. |
| 2. | If your printer allows an alphanumeric ID to be associated with a specific tray, click the Add media button. You will be repeatedly prompted first for the name and then for the tray number to be assigned to it, see Media definitions. |
| 3. | Select the orientation of the document: Portrait or Landscape. |
| o | To use the default orientation even if a default was specified in the original document, tick Override print file setting. |
| o | A page may contain text in portrait or landscape orientations. EscapeE has an automatic orientation feature to determine whether the text is in the same orientation as the page. If the text would be in the "wrong" orientation, it uses rotated characters instead so that the text is oriented appropriately. If the page contains some text in portrait and some text in landscape orientations, this feature determines which orientation most of the text is in and matches this to the orientation of the page.
Tick Auto to engage this feature. |
| 4. | Enter the number of the 'Input tray' that the printer should use by default, in case the tray number was not specified in the original document. |
| o | To use the default input tray even if a default was specified in the original document, tick Override print file setting. If the input paper tray box is left blank, the Windows printer driver's configuration setting will be used: see Printer Setup. |
| 5. | Enter the number of the Output bin that the printer should use by default, in case the bin number was not specified in the original document. |
| o | Tick Override print file setting if you would like the default output bin to be used even if a default was specified in the original document. If the output bin box is left blank, the Windows printer driver's configuration setting will be used: see Printer Setup. |
| 7. | In duplex printing, you need to keep track of whether a page is on the 'front' or the 'back' of a sheet. A tick in Show blank pages check-box ensures that all pages – even blank pages – are taken into account rather than suppressed. See also Configuring the view. |
| 8. | Click the Save button to retain these settings after you close the program.
Alternatively, click OK to use them for the current session. |
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hen printing a document, you may edit the number of copies and switch collation option for that run on the Printing dialog.
When exporting PCL or PostScript output or printing directly, you can specify that multiple copies be made in a single run by default:
| 1. | Choose Configuration... from the 'Options' menu (or press F8) then select the Printer tab. |
| 2. | Enter the number of copies of each page to be printed in the Copies edit-box. |
| o | Tick Collated check-box to print one of each page in a multi-page document before starting the next copy (e.g. for duplex printing). Collating copies may result in file which is many times bigger than an uncollated file. |
| o | When one side of each sheet in the document is blank, you may save print-time by de-selecting 'Collated': all copies of the first page are printed before starting to print the copies of the next page and so on to the end of the document. |
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Tip: Some defaults, e.g. Spot color, Special media, Copies can also be specified on the command line: see Command line syntax Printer configuration options table.
Links
Printing
Printer Setup
