I am a fox pro user and i use foxpro with windows XP SP2 and SP3.recently i upgraded ma printer to epson LQ1170q and i have an issue where the coloums of my reports are getting overlapped and the print area is quit small....we use A3 papers with landscape orientation and only half the area of the paper is utilised . i have tried all i knew to change it back to previous settings but seems like i was out of luck....pls advice as this problem is critical .

i have an issue where the coloums of my reports are getting overlapped and the print area is quit small.

First off, how are you printing your reports?

Are you:
  1. Using the FP Report Form's
  2. Using the OLD ?row,col SAY method?

If the former, then you may have to 'hack' the FP Report Form to eliminate any previously inherited printer-specific settings.

If the later, then you will have to change your code to meet what the new printer will support.  This usually involves a lot of trial-and-error testing to determine what will work on the new printer.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr
 

the problem is that this setting used to work with the old pinter and i recognized this error only wen the we changed the printer . Also it is kind of impossible for me to change the code of the program so it would be really aprreciatable if you could give me patch which i could apply on the program. earlier also we used landscape orientation so i dont think the orientation needs a change but i think the margins needs to be increased to facilitate all the coulums .

the problem is that this setting used to work with the old pinter and i recognized this error only wen the we changed the printer

That can happen especially with the OLD programming method of using @row/col SAY to output the individual 'report' lines to the printer.

Also it is kind of impossible for me to change the code of the program so it would be really aprreciatable if you could give me patch which i could apply on the program.

What you tell me lets me know that it is time for you to HIRE a FP/VFP consultant/contractor to come in and fix your code.

There is no 'patch' which will fix the lines of code within your application.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr
 

Like JRB-Bldr said,

Quote:

First off, how are you printing your reports?

Are you:
  1. Using the FP Report Form's
  2. Using the OLD ?row,col SAY method?

There is no 'patch'.  If you're using @...SAY or even the question mark (?? / ???) output methodology, you will still most likely have to change the code, as unless you're using a 'Generic/text only' driver, the output still gets sifted through the installed printers' driver.

If you're using a report form, again, the output goes through the driver so you will have to find a driver that not only works on the printer but prints the output like you want it.

One thing to keep in mind though is that the report form may contain the settings for the old driver.  You may need to remove them or re-modify the report form for the new driver.
There are plenty of posts in the forum and the VFP forum on how to remove printer data from the report form so I won't rehash that here.

 

  -Dave Summers-  
 
Even more Fox stuff at:
http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

thanks for the info everyone..
..we use the x,y method!!

You may want to review your printer's default configuration settings.  You may need to set portrait/landscape, font type, font size (width/height), etc. If the printer is defaulting to a proportional font and different font size and you're printing in a fixed width font such as Courier, that would cause problems.

Lots of printers accept "escape" codes to set these details.  HP and perhaps others used PCL 5 for many years with their laser printers which your programmer may have made use of when he set his printer codes before and after printing.  Epson had populat dot matrix printers and they used slightly different Epson-compatible commands.

we use the x,y method

That's what I was afraid of.

As has been said above, different printers use different default values - fonts, character spacing/size, page spacing, etc.  
You could try to change these values through the printer's own interface, but the likelihood of it working for you is small.  And, if it did work, that printer would ALWAYS print in that manner which may not be what other users printing from other applications may want.

And sometimes different printers have Programming Command Languages (Epson printer 'language' is VERY different than HP's).

In order to change your ?row,col SAY method results you will need to change the values in the code lines within your application.  
   example: change ?5,4 SAY <whatever>  to  ?5,3 SAY <whatever>

And/or if you want to change the printer default values through code using the printer-specific command language, you will likely need to either add new code or change existing code lines which issue the present printer commands such as Landscape, etc.

You seem to have 2 choices:
1. Find a printer on eBay or elsewhere which is the SAME as your old printer and buy it.
2. HIRE a FP/VFP contractor/consultant to modify your application's code.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr