Generic Print Forms

Generic Printer Forms

Some of the paragraphs in this document are of a technical nature and are intended for advanced computer users, but read on to get a better understanding of the Print process in Windows.

Use the Generic Printer form for printing to a Dot matrix impact printer. Dot matrix printers are used for fast report printing to fan-fold paper. Useful if you are printing long lists.

Generic Print Form for Receipts

You can also use a Generic Printer Form to print receipts to a dot matrix printer.

Generic Print Forms are formatted with Generic Printer Fonts which do not print on Graphic Printers like bubble jet and laser printers.

Be sure that the printer selected for the form is a Generic Printer (Use Add Printers - Generic Printer in the Windows Printer management section of your Control Panel).

In many of the Print Options screens, a "Use Generic Print Form" tick box is provided for the selection of the correct print form. If you don't use a Dot Matrix printer, do not tick the box.

About Dot Matrix Printers

Dot Matrix printers are controlled by either a Generic Printer driver program or a Printer Driver program specific to the model and brand of the printer. If you use a Generic Printer Driver for a printer, the printer is NOT placed in Graphic print mode by the controlling driver, so characters sent to the printer are processed by the printers internal printer driver and will print according to the Font, Font Size and Character Style set at the front panel of the printer. Dot Matrix printing with a Generic Driver will deliver the maximum speed of the printer, but the Characters printed are only as good as the number of "pins" on the print head of the printer.

Preview always uses the Graphic Printer form.

Because a Generic Printer driver sends RAW characters to a printer (as ascii characters), the Windows operating system can not know how the printer will space out the printing or what fonts the printer is using so the Preview program in UniRes can not give an accurate representation of a document for Generic Printer Drivers. This is why UniRes always uses the Graphic Printer form to preview a document (report).

Report Designer and Generic Printers

The Report Designer (called up when you click on a Customize button), can be used to adjust the positioning of text and field boxes etc. on the form, but you will have to do several test prints to get the alignment right of printed fields. The Reort Designer tries to approximate the position on screen of the fields according to the chosen font. When you use a Graphic Printer driver, the alignment is 100% accurate as the page is actually formatted as picture and streamed out to the printer as dots. The printer then "paints" a picture of the report.

Using a Dot Matrix Printer with its own special Graphic driver, will slow the printer down considerably as it tries to print a document as an "Image" rather than as characters. It prints like it is trying to paint a picture instead of printing discreet lines of text.

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