Hi Andy, You should definitely stick to as standard Ansi C as possible, so your project would compile on pretty much anything. I know some (most?) people here use OpenWatcom, since it's free. Myself I use rather Turbo C (when doing some real mode things). There is also DJGPP of course, but I think it is too big of a cow for your project (you do need to keep it as small as possible).
About the project itself - I can only recommend to stick to what you are comfortable with (ESC/P vs PS/PCL stuff), ie ignoring the whole TSR part for now. Do a small ESC/P->PS or ESC/P->PCL library with a clean API first, maybe with a simple command line test program (you need to test it after all), and once you have this, move forward with other, less comfortable things (TSR, intercepting BIOS calls, etc...). Having some kind of Epson LX dot printer "emulator" able to output to any modern printer (or even to PDF maybe?) one day would be really cool. good luck Mateusz On July 14, 2014 4:45:28 AM GMT+02:00, Andy Stamp <[email protected]> wrote: >Hi, > >(Kind of sidetracked from FreeDOS roadmap but seems to belon here...) > >I'm just getting started programming for DOS but have worked a bit with >different printing languages and would love to get started on a project >that converts ESC/P to something more modern like PCL or PS on the fly. > I >will definitely need help on the TSR side as I know what they do, but >not >how they work. > >For new projects, what compilers should be targeted? OpenWatcom seems >like >the obvious choice, but I don't know what other folks are using. > >--Andy > > >On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Tom Ehlert <[email protected]> >wrote: > >> > I suggested the shelling technique for somebody who wants to >experiment >> > with hooking the BIOS interrupts but is not ready to tackle the TSR >> > portion. >> right; also much easier to debug (as you already pointed out) >> >> > "Too big" depends on the program being used; there are many >> > programs that will still load and run even with another 64K missing >from >> > RAM. Let's leave that question to the person who decides to tackle >the >> > project, eh? >> right. if this program ever materializes, and is written in C, I >offer my >> help to make it a TSR with the least possible footprint. >> >> > My Brother laser printer (HL 5370DW) which emulates Epson FX codes, >PCL >> > and PostScript just printed a PostScript copy of my 2002 family >> > christmas letter from DOSBox using the following command: >> >> > nc -target 192.168.2.20 9100 -bin < \xmas.ps >> >> > Lots of fonts and formatting, an embedded image or two, etc. in a >3MB >> > file. You are limited to what the printer understands, but I think >I've >> > demonstrated that you can safely send ASCII, PCL, PostScript, or >> > whatever your printer supports. >> you are probably right. even in the dark ages before Windows 1995, >> many (at least some) programs existed that could talk PostScript and >> PCL. >> >> Tom >> >> >> >> >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> _______________________________________________ >> Freedos-devel mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel >> Mateusz -- Sent from mobile mail. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want fast and easy access to all the code in your enterprise? Index and search up to 200,000 lines of code with a free copy of Black Duck® Code Sight™ - the same software that powers the world's largest code search on Ohloh, the Black Duck Open Hub! Try it now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bds _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
