Alignment of "print program" output

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Florian
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Alignment of "print program" output

Post by Florian »

Having happily played with my new DM42 for some months now I finally also treated myself to a HP82240A printer. My first tries with this beauty were, of course, to try about every printing option possible, including PRP. The printout seemed quite strange to me, everything basically aligned to the right side of the paper. Only later I understood that this actually depended upon my choice of the printing mode. While NORM prints everything kind-of right aligned, in MAN everything is nicely aligned to the left. In that respect the PRP output in TRACE mode looks even more interesting...

Switching back to free42 I the learned that this pattern is not only limited to the DM42 paired with a "real" printer but that this behavior is actually already innate to free42.

Having unfortunately no access to a real HP-42S I am now rather curious whether my experiences with the program listing printout are faithful to the behavior of the real thing or whether this is particular to the implementation of free42 (and thus also the DM42).

Cheers,
Florian
Thomas Okken
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Re: Alignment of "print program" output

Post by Thomas Okken »

The behavior of PRP in NORM and TRACE modes in Free42 is not faithful to the original; the real HP-42S prints one program line per print-out line, left-justified, regardless of print mode.

This behavior is a little liberty I allowed myself: this is how PRP behaves on the HP-41C (at least when used with the HP-82143A printer), and I've always found those options to be useful, so I implemented them in Free42 as well.
Florian
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Re: Alignment of "print program" output

Post by Florian »

Thomas,

thank you very much for the clarification. So it was a design decision. Interesting. :)

I think I kind of get the TRACE variant which is structured and compact at the same time. Also the little extra space in the NORM output really helps readability. (I now observed this space on the Android free42 version but I need to recheck whether the printer also adds a new line.) But I think I still need some time to see the usefulness of having this quite busy, right-sided alignment in NORM...

Anyways, I am relieved that everything works as intended and I will just have to remember to choose the appropriate mode before printing a program listing. :D

Cheers
Florian
Thomas Okken
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Re: Alignment of "print program" output

Post by Thomas Okken »

The right-handed alignment in NORM mode is useful, at least on the 82143A, because it prints faster. The home position of the print head is at the right, and it has to move a bit to the left and then back to the right in order to advance the paper. So in MAN mode, the print head has to move all the way left and then back again for every line, while in NORM mode, it has to move only about halfway across the paper for most lines.

But my personal favorite is TRACE mode, because it is much more compact, and, as you said, it also makes the structure of the programs easier to recognize. The only downside is that when pasting programs in PRGM mode, Free42 cannot yet parse TRACE mode print-outs, it needs listings to have no more than one instruction per line. :D
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RAPo
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Re: Alignment of "print program" output

Post by RAPo »

Is the word 'yet' to be interpret as: 'is being worked on'?
DM41X beta: SN00018.
DM41X: SN00496.
DM42 beta: SN00074.
DM42:SN06020.
DM42 converted to C47 SN08973
DM10L: SN056/100.
DM11L: SN 02058.
DM15L: SN2074.
DM16L: SN2156.
DM15, DM16, DM41
and a whole bunch of the original HP's,
Thomas Okken
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Re: Alignment of "print program" output

Post by Thomas Okken »

No, it should be interpreted a bit more loosely, as in: Free42 can't parse such listings yet, but I think it should, and one day it will. I don't consider it a high priority.
Florian
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Location: Japan

Re: Alignment of "print program" output

Post by Florian »

Thomas Okken wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:14 pm
The right-handed alignment in NORM mode is useful, at least on the 82143A, because it prints faster. The home position of the print head is at the right, and it has to move a bit to the left and then back to the right in order to advance the paper. So in MAN mode, the print head has to move all the way left and then back again for every line, while in NORM mode, it has to move only about halfway across the paper for most lines.
Thank you for explaining the rationale behind this implementation. Interesting design decision by HP to have the right side as home position...

So I now checked this with my 82240A. Unfortunately the printhead always moves the complete length of a row no matter what which feels a bit like a cheapo design decision to keep the costs down. So no speed up here.

Florian

PS: And now I finally also found your post from 2018 where you had basically already explained the different print modes. My apologies for the duplicate question.
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