HP Forum Archive 15

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HP-41C printer simulation - output format? Message #1 Posted by Eric Smith on 10 June 2005, 8:18 p.m. Now that I've got the 41CX working correctly (AFAIK) in Nonpareil, I've been thinking about simulating the 82143A printer (or maybe 82162A or 82440A/B), and I wonder if anyone has thoughts on suitable output formats. The first thing that came to mind was to just display a scrollable output tape in a window, as a graphic bitmap 168 pixels wide (perhaps with a double-size option). That's fine for display, but if someone wants to cut text from it, or save it as text, should it just drop the graphic columns? Perhaps "Save As" should allow selection of text-only or PNG graphics? Should text mode do any sort of translation of non-ASCII characters? I could convert "funny" characters to some kind of escape sequences, or use Unicode characters with UTF-8 encoding.

Re: HP-41C printer simulation - output format? Message #2 Posted by Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil) on 10 June 2005, 8:41 p.m., in response to message #1 by Eric Smith Hi, Eric; what about saving the output straight to a single ASCII file that is thus read to compose the scrollable window? This way you'd have both. Everytime a printout is performed and the standard file exists (hp41out.txt, maybe?) the program asks for a new name or overwrite the existing file. Would that be difficult? As for what you've done, congrats! Nonpareil is a great achievement. Best regards. Luiz (Brazil)

Re: HP-41C printer simulation - output format? Message #3 Posted by Eric Smith on 10 June 2005, 9:19 p.m., in response to message #2 by Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil) But how would the graphics be represented in the ASCII file? That and the encoding for the 41's non-ASCII characters are the big questions. I probably should be working on the Windows version rather than the printer support. But adding new features is more fun.

Re: HP-41C printer simulation - Windows who? Message #4 Posted by Howard Owen on 10 June 2005, 10:55 p.m., in response to message #3 by Eric Smith There are too many HP-41 simulators for Windows already, Eric. My vote is for you to keep working on the only (AFAIK) Linux/Posix HP-41 simulator. (Oh yeah, and all those other calcs as well. 8) I've just received my PC HP-IL interface from Christoph Klug. My plan is to get it working under DOS with EMU41 on an old Compaq 386 box. From there, I intend to write a Linux driver, probably starting with 2.6, then backporting to 2.4. I had planned to try to get EMU41's virtual HP-IL devices working with this driver by using DOSEMU and FreeDOS. But it would be cool if there were also a native 41 emulator that could speak HP-IL. I imagine it might be a lot of work, but who needs Windows anyway? 8)

Re: HP-41C printer simulation - Windows who? Message #5 Posted by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) on 11 June 2005, 4:20 p.m., in response to message #4 by Howard Owen As Nonpareil is very much more than "yet another 41 emulator", please do give us (mere miserable, non-linux-wizards) a chance! With shame, I admit I cannot follow the "cygwin + scons + xauthority + subversion + kml + etc + etc" path. Of course, all said with due respect, admiration for an impressive research work and, hence, with my hat off.

Nonpareil is more... Message #6 Posted by Mike (Stgt) on 13 June 2005, 5:46 a.m., in response to message #5 by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) Absolutely d'accord!!! Did you read the story, how Eric got the ROM images? A story of success! That his Nonpareil is a "do-all-classics" is his decision I do have to respect. Christoph Giesselink offers a different program for every HW platform, Rusty Wagner's vTI is a "do-all-TIs" (but I know nothing about TI's HW) -- it's just a decission of the programmer. I like to emphasize on the fact that they all offer their great work for free! So I to restrain myself from any critic _how_ they offer their work. One word about Cygwin: I do not like this "cygwin + scons + xauthority + subversion + ..." either. I just use Cygwin for other reasons and installed it with a cookbook recipe. No idea about the Dos and Donts. So I apologize for my beginner's questions about Cygwin in a HP-calculator forum. But ("Never stop asking" - Einstein) I'll continue: With Nonpareil-0.71 I get a new error: "pngtopnm: not found" Sorry for asking, TIA for any hint. Ciao.....Mike Edited: 13 June 2005, 5:46 a.m.

png2pnm found - but ... Message #7 Posted by Mike (Stgt) on 13 June 2005, 8:02 a.m., in response to message #6 by Mike (Stgt) Well, sorry again, had no NetPBM yet. With it still same error - but typing in the command works(!) ... Ciao.....Mike

Re: HP-41C printer simulation - Windows who? Message #8 Posted by Howard Owen on 13 June 2005, 11:30 p.m., in response to message #5 by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) Don't be ashamed of having trouble with that big, ugly layer of faux-linux on top of Windows. It's a hairball and a mess. That certainly isn't Eric's fault of course. Cygwin is frequently the only way to get the job done if you want to do anything remotely like POSIX on Windows. It isn't trouble free though, by any means. And if you layer the complexity of a build system, with all it's components, that isn't a standard part of Cygwin, on top of the complexities Cygwin brings on its own, then you have somethig even very astute users are going to struggle with. There's no shame attached at all. I shouldn't have suggested that Nonpareil has no value among the field of HP calculator emulators on Windows. That clearly isn't true, and it wasn't my intended point. The real point was that there are no other HP41 emulators for Linux besides Nonpareil, as far as I know. I wanted to raise my hand to say that I appreciate Eric's work for that reason, among others. I also wanted to suggest that work I plan to carry out on Linux could have applicability to Nonpareil. Clearly there's a lot of demand for Nonpareil on Windows, and that's fine. But I'd like to add my vote of support for the Linux version, while we're on the topic.

Re: HP-41C printer simulation - Windows who? Message #9 Posted by Mike (Stgt) on 14 June 2005, 4:03 a.m., in response to message #8 by Howard Owen D'accord once more! A Sharp Zaurus user ask me every time we meet about an HP41-emulator for Linux, for WinXX and WinCE there would be enough around. I showed him Free42 and Nonpareil. I'll ask him at the next meeting if he is satisfied now. BTW - it seems my NutEm was up to now the only 41 on a IBM host (and only one who uses it <VBG>). With Linux on zVM Nonpareil could work there too, so Eric is a step ahead of me (no: several steps!). Ciao.....Mike

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