- How do I set up Lightwright for
DOS to work with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95?
- Why do I get M's, N's, and D's on my
printouts instead of lines?
- The first few pages print just fine,
but then I get an error message and Lightwright stops
printing.
- The printer prints the first page
perfectly, but starts page 2 and all the following pages
partway down the page.
- Most of the page prints fine, but the
footer winds up on the top of the next page, which is
blank except for that footer. As a result, everything is
taking twice as many pages to print.
- My laptop computer has a monochrome
screen, and I can't see the highlighting very well when I
use Lightwright.
- My computer locks up shortly after
LWSETUP tests my screen display.
- I just got a new printer; how do I
tell Lightwright about it?
- I get an error "Overflow in module SPEEDGRP" when I choose Auto-sort while looking at colors
Why do I get M's, N's, and D's on my printouts instead of lines?
Years ago (circa 1980), Epson decided to use the upper half of the ASCII character set to give users italic characters. A few years later, IBM decided to use the upper half of the ASCII character set to give users the ability to draw lines. If your printer is an Epson printer or emulates an Epson, Lightwright can't draw lines with it unless you can switch it into IBM emulation. If you can do this, choose one of the IBM Proprinters from the LWSETUP list. If you're stuck with Epson mode, run LWSETUP, choose your printer from the list, and then ask LWSETUP to test your printer. When it asks you if you can see vertical lines down the page, answer NO and from then on Lightwright will use a substitute set of characters in place of the italic letters. It won't look as pretty as the IBM line-drawing characters, but it's better than M's, N's, and D's.
The first few pages print just fine, but then I get an error message and Lightwright stops printing.
You probably have a Laser printer (or a serial printer) whose buffer is filling up, and when that happens DOS tells Lightwright that the printer is no longer available. The solution to this is to add the MODE command to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Assuming your printer is on LPT1:, add this line to AUTOEXEC.BAT:
MODE LPT1:,,P
(Yes, there are two commas in a row) This will tell DOS to be patient and wait for the printer to become available again, rather than sending an error message to Lightwright.
The printer prints the first page perfectly, but starts page 2 and all the following pages partway down the page.
Lightwright doesn't actually know where the top of each page is; all it does is send a signal to the printer that says "go to the top of the next page". What you're seeing is a case where the print head is at the top of the page, but the printer thinks it's in the middle of the page. This can happen if you manually feed the paper up without resetting the printer. The solution is to put the print head at the top of the page and then turn the printer off and back on again. Once you do that, the printer will re-initialize it's top-of-page and everything should print fine after that.
Most of the page prints fine, but the footer winds up on the top of the next page, which is blank except for that footer. As a result, everything is taking twice as many pages to print.
The page length you have set in Lightwright is too long. Most laser printers or sheet-feed printers will only print on 60 lines per page, as opposed to the 66 lines tractor-feed printers can use. Go into LWSETUP, do a Partial Installation, re-select your printer, and when LWSETUP asks how many lines to use per page, try 60. In rare cases, you may have to go lower, especially if you're using paper shorter than 11". Figure on 6 lines per inch, with a half-inch margin top and bottom (10" x 6 lines per inch=60 lines per page).
My laptop computer has a monochrome screen, and I can't see the highlighting very well when I use Lightwright.
Your computer probably has either an EGA or VGA-compatible screen, so Lightwright thinks you can see background colors clearly. Unfortunately, many monochrome LCD screens don't show grey backgrounds very well, so the highlighting is almost invisible. There are several things to do:
Start LWSETUP with the (MONO) argument. Do this by
starting LWSETUP using the following command:
LWSETUP MONO (notice the
space between LWSETUP and MONO)
In LWSETUP, be sure to say you have a monochrome screen when you pick your screen colors.
If you still have problems, try starting Lightwright itself with a monochrome argument. In this case, start Lightwright by using the following command: LW (MONO) (notice the space after LW and the parentheses)
My computer locks up shortly after LWSETUP tests my screen display.
Your computer told Lightwright that you have an EGA-compatible display (or better), but it's neglected to mention that it can't display the full color palette that Lightwright expects. To solve this problem, start LWSETUP with the NOEGA argument, like this: LWSETUP NOEGA This will tell Lightwright to ignore any EGA/VGA capabilities it thinks your computer has. You won't notice any difference except for a smaller range of colors to choose from in LWSETUP.
I just got a new printer; how do I tell Lightwright about it?
From the DOS prompt, log onto your Lightwright directory (using a command like CD \LTWRIGHT), then enter the command LWSETUP. Press <P> to answer that you want to do a Partial installation, then <R> because yes, the disk is ready (assuming you have a hard drive). A menu of things you can change will appear; choose the "Change Printer" one then continue through the process of choosing a printer (don't bother to test it). When that's done, choose option #6, "Everything's okay - save changes to disk", and you're done
I get an error "Overflow in module SPEEDGRP" when I choose Auto-sort while looking at colors
This error is the result of a "bug" in the Microsoft run-time module that provides the foundation for Lightwright. It occurs when a color includes either "D" or "E" followed by a number, for example "D142" or "E168". Although I have no confirmation from Microsoft as to what is actually happening, I suspect that the run-time interprets these as numbers in scientific exponential format and as a result the numbers are too big for Lightwright to handle (the highest number Lightwright can deal with in any form is 32760).
The work-around is to put one or more other characters between the letter and the number. In the above examples, you could use "D-142" or "E-168" or "Dev 142" or some such.
I wish I could tell you that Microsoft has fixed this bug, but alas I cannot. Hopefully the run-time for Visual Basic has solved this problem and it will be banished in LW3.
