Please enable JavaScript to view this site.

A-Shell Development History

GDI printing bug fix/refinement: The width parameter in the //SETFONT statement now works more precisely and reliably with fixed pitch fonts, across all font families, printers and resolutions. Previously, certain fonts (most notoriously Courier) didn't "behave" very well. And in addition, since the individual cell width was being rounded to the nearest integer number of pixels, small adjustments to the width were often not having the desired effect with lower printer device resolutions. Now, the cell width is interpolated to 1/8 of a pixel, resulting in fine control even with 100 DPI (e.g. fax) devices.

COMPATIBILITY WARNING: This "fix" could possibly result in a small change in the horizontal character spacing of existing printouts. The change will probably be small, and will always represent a correction, but it is possible that having worked out precise spacing by trial-and-error, you may need to make adjustments after this fix. (After considerable soul-searching and public comment, we decided that since width is a relatively new parameter, rarely used, that the likelihood of this fix actually improving the spacing of existing reports was many times greater than the chance of it making a report worse. But if you use the width parameter to fine tune the fixed pitch spacing of a very precise form, and especially if you used trial-and-error rather than math to figure out the ideal width, you may need to take another look. (The upside is, anyone affected by this would have been at risk of their reports looking different on different printers; so even if you have to make an adjustment, the report will now print consistently across devices.)

See the following forum thread for a more detailed discussion: http://www.microsabio.net/ubb2/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000103