Settings - Display Printer Page

The options in the Printer page affect how the screen display is printed.

They affect only Print Screen, Auto Print mode, and Printer Controller mode. If you select Print Screen from the File menu or the toolbar, these options are not used.

Print Screen (F2) options and Printer Controller mode are available only for VT sessions. Graphics printing options on the Settings - Display Printer page are available only for graphics sessions.

Table 3-43

Setting

Description

Mode

Determine how and when printing takes place. The host normally selects these modes for you.

Extent

Select how much of the VT page to print when the host requests a print screen. Page prints the entire page, even if you are viewing only a portion of the page. Region prints only the scrolling region.

Terminator

Determine whether a form feed is sent at the end of the print operation. A form feed forces each print to a separate page.

Automatic

Use a fixed-pitch font. The font is selected from those supplied by the printer driver. The font that best fits 80 or 132 columns on the printed page is selected.

Fonts

Choose this button to display the Fonts dialog box and set the printer font to use. This option is available only if you do not select Automatic. The font you select here is used only for printing; it is not displayed on the screen.

Controller Mode Emulates ANSI Printer

Print data from the host without displaying it on the screen. Select this option if the host expects to send data to an ANSI printer in Printer Controller mode.

Finish Printing Idle Timer

Set the interval of idle time (no data received) after which any buffered printer data is flushed, and the page is printed.

Bypass Printer Driver

Send print jobs directly to the printer without interpretation by the printer driver. This eliminates the form feed sent by the driver at the end of a print job. Although printer settings are lost, this option can be used safely in printer controller mode or if your print job is plain text.

Print Background

Print the current screen background. By default, the background does not print. (The background color is the paper color.)

Print Colors

Print colors on a color printer, and use a dithering technique on a monochrome printer. The dithering technique depends on the driver's support. If you do not select this option, all non-white colors are converted to black.

Reverse Black And White

Swap the brightest and darkest color in the palette for printing. Usually, this prints the image on a white background (because paper is white, and the screen is usually black).

Use Bitmap

Use the bitmap method of graphics printing, regardless of the backing store method selected in the Display Graphics page.

To emulate an ANSI printer (VT sessions only)

  1. In a VT session, from the Options menu, choose Settings.

  2. Under Categories, choose Display.

  3. On the Printer page, select Controller Mode Emulates ANSI Printer. The data is translated to equivalent Windows printer commands, and sent to the printer through the normal printer driver.

To print data without displaying it on the screen (Printer Controller mode, VT sessions only)

  1. In a VT session, from the Options menu, choose Settings.

  2. Under Categories, choose Display.

  3. Choose the Printer tab.

  4. To manually switch to Printer Controller mode, from the Mode drop-down list, select Controller.

    Headers and footers are not printed in Printer Controller mode.