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Print Jobs Not Consistently Printing On The E
DocumentID: 646965
Revision Date: 29-Feb-96 8:19:18 PM

The information in this document applies to:
WordPerfect® 5.1 for DOS

Problem

Symptoms: When printing on the Epson FX-86e printer the first print job prints OK, the second job prints every word on a separate page. Solutions: First, from what I can tell the problem is coming from the Horizontal Motion codes in the driver. It's really not a driver problem or even a WP problem at all, but I've found some clues by printing to disk. The Horizontal Motion method we're using in the driver is Relative Horizontal Motion, and the code for "Move Forward" is [27]"\"SENDLOHI(HS).

Second, the "Horizontal Motion Unit" (in "Size and Spacing" for the Courier 10 cpi font) is 1/120. That means that whenever WP wants the printer to move horizontally, it tells it how many 1/120" units to move.

Okay, now here's the big "synthesis": when you're printing in 10 pitch, assuming that no justification is really coming into play, each word should be 1/10" apart, right? So, WP will tell the printer to move over 12/120 of an inch! (Ta-Da!)

(Hint: To tell the printer to move 12/120", WP sends this code: [27]"\"[12,0]. What would happen if, for some reason, the printer "forgot" what [27]"\" meant? It would ignore the first part of the code, accept the [12] as a FORM FEED (!), and then receive the NULL character [0] and basically do nothing with it. Then it would print the next word, after which WP would send the very same code and another sheet would be ejected.)
By the way, by this same token, if you were to switch to 12 pitch, they should be getting LINE feeds between each word rather than FORM feeds, because then WP would send [27]"\"[10,0], and the [10] would cause a line feed.

The question now is: Why can you send a job once and have everything be fine, but when you resend the very same job, the printer has lost its mind? The only thing I can think of is that there is a reset code of some sort being sent at the end of the first job that messes things up for the second time around. However, the only code I can find in the driver at the end of a print job is [27]"@", which is also the very FIRST code sent for the FIRST print job. Sounds like we've come full circle, huh?

Where do we go from here? You could always try deleting the [27]"@" from both spots in the "Initialize and Reset" screen. It could also turn out that this customer's printer has an old ROM version that doesn't handle the [27]"\" sequence very well. (I have heard of another Epson-owning customer who called Epson and was told that there were no problems with their printer, but when Mike Taylor called in their behalf, he was able to find out that their particular ROM version would handle neither our Absolute Positioning code nor our Relative Horizontal Motion code very well.
You may have them call Epson and find out what they can do.

If it turns out that there ARE problems with the ROM, they only have two options: upgrade it, or use a driver with a different horizontal motion method altogether, like some of the other FX series drivers.

In the meantime maybe they can simply adjust their Word Spacing up or down a bit so that the printer will receive neither a [8] (backspace), [9] (Tab), [10] (Line Feed), [12] (Form Feed), [13] (Carriage Return), or other control code. Of course, if the same scenario prevails, they won't get ANY spacing between words at all.

Answer:

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