Wifi Printing almost from Q68 and Qx0

 This blog has been quiet not because interest in QDOS, smsq/e and things QL has waned but because all available spare time has been used up in writing some software that allows a QL system with a reliable serial port to print to the Wifi printer here at QL heaven. The solution is similar to the RetroPrint project but is mainly software based, although a RPi is still needed for the Wifi part.

Parts required are a RPi, a null modem cable to a serial Pi hat or a serial to USB cable. The rest is software as follows:

On the RPi connect the RPi to the Wifi network, and install the RPi serial port on its expansion pins or on one of the USB ports. This can be done through the raspi-config program on an upto date installation. Then install the CUPs printer driver, good guidance for this can be found in early Magpi magazines volumes 11 and 12.

Then install the python cups bindings and next write the python software for the RPi to catch and send files transmitted via the serial port to the printer and write the SBasic to send files through the serial port of the QL. 

 

 Simple? No not really. Many document files on the QL are text, some are html and many are Quill doc files. The good news is that CUPs can handle text and html and postscript files natively, so send these with the appropriate commands and viola they print out. 

 

Quill docs are something else. There are a number of Quill doc stripper programs  but typically these lose text formatting which is unsatisfactory.

So a Quill to postscript filter was constructed based on Marcel Kilgus MPS_bas program and the result today :

 

It doesn't look like much and the formatting while acceptable is not exactly as in the original.

Anyway using this as a printing system gives quite good contol of printouts.

 

 The system is still a work in progress as CUPs has Courier, Times , Helvetica fonts built in.

EddIcon Resized

It has been some time since there was time to update this blog. That does not mean that nothing has been happening in QL heaven. Here is a glimpse at some of things happening here. A Q68 was acquired and one irritation was the EddIcon could not run on the 512x384 16 bit colour resolution screen as it only used a window 640x480. So after some devling about the innards of EddIcon here is a revamped version that has 3 window izes. The original, a medium sized window that fits in to 512x384 and a small window suitable for 512x256. Besides the window changes there have been some other changes to the interface and functionality. Sprites can now be saved out with RLE compression, as mode 64, 32 and mode 4. Mode 4 sprites can also be saved as a series of data statements to be incorporated in to QPTR superbasic. There are still some bugs in the colour handling routines so its not for release yet.

Other things that have been looked at are a simplified method of automatically creating and editing simple Qascade menus., reading and writing to FAT16 formatted CF cards on the Q60 and printing through the serial port via a RPi, Python and CUPs to a WiFi printer, a bit like the retroprint project. The difference being that CUPs handles text, HTML, and postscript. All of these modes work on the system. Quill doc files still have to be converted.

All these things might be looked at in future posts but at the moment here is EddIcon in 3 sizes.