PRINTER SUPPORT

Kermit uses DOS services for printing. There is no knowledge of particular
printer types in Kermit.  Kermit determines whether the printer is ready, or
whether there has been a printing error, via DOS's return code.  If DOS tells
Kermit the printer is not ready, Kermit changes the printer device name to NUL
so subsequent print operations won't block.  To reenable printing operations
(e.g. after turning on the printer, adding paper, etc), use a SET PRINTER
command such as SET PRINTER PRN or SET PRINTER LPT1.

The Print Screen and Shift-PrintScreen keys are never seen by Kermit.  They
are intercepted and acted upon by the BIOS.  Thus Kermit has no control over
the format of the printed output.  For example, a formfeed is not added to the
end to force a page eject.  If you want to print the current screen with a
formfeed at the end, use the following procedure:

  SET DUMP PRN	; Specify that screen dumps go to the printer

and then use the \Kdump keyboard verb to accomplish the screen dump.  This
verb is assigned by default to the keypad Ctrl-End key, but you can assign it
to another key of your choice (but not Print Screen), for example:

  SET KEY \315 \Kdump  ; Assign screen dump to F1

(Shift-)Printscreen can cause the PC to hang if there is no attached printer.
This is a BIOS feature, Kermit never receives the command.  If this happens
during terminal emulation, try pressing Alt-= (hold down Alt and press the "="
key) several times to reset the terminal emulator.

Serial printers are not well supported by DOS, and since Kermit does all its
printing through DOS, Kermit's printing features might not work well with
serial printers.  To use a serial printer effectively, you must have a driver
for it that takes care of flow control, such as MSPSPD, available on the
MS-DOS Kermit Utilities and Technical Documentation diskette.

Transparent printing starts when the host sends the sequence ESC [ 4 i and
stops when the host sends ESC [ 5 i.  All characters, including escape
sequences, that arrive at the port are passed directly to the printer without
translation (but the parity bit is stripped if Kermit's parity is not NONE).
If character translation is desired, or it is desired not pass screen-control
escape sequences to the printer, use Autoprint rather than Transparent print
(ESC [ 0 i, ESC [ ? 4 i, ESC [ ? 5 i).	In that case, characters are translated
to the current IBM code page.  If your printer doesn't support your IBM code
page, you need an external utility to translate from the PC code page to the
printer's character set.  You can use SET PRINTER xxxx to capture Transparent
print or Autoprint data into a file.

.