There are two commonly used methods for setting the font size in "legacy" A-BASIC reports. One method involves embedding printer-specific ESCAPE codes (such as PCL commands) into the file itself. Assuming that you have you have a compatible printer at the AshLPD end, this method just requires that you add PASSTHROUGH=ON to the printer definition file on the AshLPD side.
The other common method is to not embed any font commands in the print file itself and instead to just rely on the user to have the printer loaded with appropriately sized paper (or to manually set switches on the printer for the desired font size). In this case, you can take advantage of A-Shell/Windows' GDI printing feature to auto-set the font size, by adding the following to the printer definition file on the AshLPD side:
PITCH=AUTO
CPP=*
The PITCH=AUTO option causes the print processor to scan the first 100 lines of the printout to determine the longest line length. Based on this maximum line length, and the fact that the CPP (columns per page) option is set to *, A-Shell/Windows will request a suitable font so that the longest line fits in the width of the page.
If you prefer that the print size not vary so much, and would rather have all reports use just one of two fonts (say, one for 80 column reports and one for 132 column reports), then you could use a variation of the CPP statement like this:
CPP=80,132
This would generate a font suitable for 80 columns, for any report whose longest line was less than or equal to 80 columns. Otherwise it would generate a font suitable for 132 columns. (You can adjust those to provide extra margin space, or set the second value to * to indicate a custom font for any line length beyond 80 columns.
