Problem printing MRWE output (Absoft 9.0, Windows)

[jlseber]

We are running Absoft 9.0 under Windows 7.  When my users produce output in MRWE that is longer than one physical page and try to print it, the output is cut off at one page.  I need to find a fix for this as soon as possible.  I looked for a service pack or quick fix and found none.  Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

jlseber

[Mike Linacre]

jlseber, my guess is that LinesPerPage in print.f is not being computed correctly. Suggestion: set LinesPerPage to a reasonable value, such as 50.

[Mark Coxhead]

Hello,

Yes Mike's answer is along the lines  I gave in my post of 2nd January 2009.  This refers to Absoft version 10, but I suspect applies to Abosft version 9.   We had previously been using Absoft 5.0 and the bug was introduced in the MRWE somewhere between these versions:


"In the subroutine mrwe_print (print.f90) the number of lines per page are determined by the windows API GetDeviceCaps(pdt.hDC, VERTRES) gives the height in raster lines of the screen.     This statement was present in Absoft 5, but for some odd reason returns a value of approximately six times the correct value.   [There is a whole load of additional code to do with viewports and antisotropic mappings which I have not had time to investigate because the subject looks extensive].

Therefore in the DO LOOP that writes the physical page:

I have changed

     if (y == LinesPerPage) then
               to
      if (y == NINT(LinesPerpage/6.125))

This will produce PRINT images with about a margin of one centimetre  at the foot of each page.

I have tested this change using :

A)   different fonts
B)   different font sizes (some large, some small)
C)   different printers
D)   different pcs
E)   portrait and landscape images

The change seems to hold up." 



As will be seen the change was trivial, and when I contacted Absoft they did have a fix.  However, this was not spotted immediately, by which time I had significantly tailored my version of the MRWE and so I went with my solution above, rather than having to retrospectively add my changes into the revised MRWE.    This was nearly three years ago, and the change appears to have been successful.


-----------------------------------


Off hand there is another long-term bug in the MRWE with cut/paste.  If you use this feature then this can have significant impact on other Windows applications (e.g. Word).  You need to CLOSE the clipboard in the MRWE.


Hope this helps.

[jlseber]

The changes mentioned above did indeed help.  After applying them, I had one additional problem: printing at the top and the bottom of the page was cut off due to the approximately .25 inch unprintable area around the outside of a laser-printed page.  I solved this by changing

y = 0

to

y = 3

when initializing the line counting variable y in that same routine in print.f90 mentioned previously.  Be sure to do it twice, once above the loop and inside when the page is full.  This allows us to work normally.  I do wish when the job is sent that pagination would be recognized in case someone inadvertently codes an infinite loop so that the number of pages would show in the printing dialog, but these changes get us going again.  Thanks for the help, folks.  I really appreciate it.

jlseber