VB Pretty Printer Copyright 1993-1994 All rights reserved. SUPPORT CompuServe: 73173,1137, 24 Hours-A-Day Fax: 1-419-471-9944, 24 Hours-A-Day Voice: 1-419-292-2399, M-F, 9 AM - 5PM ET ***File Contents*** Overview System Requirements Installation Getting Started New Features Upgrading Compatibility Issues Frequently Asked Questions File Distribution ***VB Pretty Printer Overview*** Thank you for your interest in Pretty Printer. Together, Pretty Printer and You - the Visual Basic programmer, have the capability to produce the most professional listings in the business. Pretty Printer is 100% Visual Basic(R) code, and demonstrates the enormous power Visual Basic brings to the Windows(tm) developer. At the same time, Pretty Printer expands and strengthens Visual Basic's code printing capabilities with a host of new features. Pretty Printer's black and white output is crisp, neat, and very readable. Selected code components can be highlighted using the program's "grayscale like" background feature. Whether you use a laser, inkjet or dot matrix, Pretty Printer will produce a listing you will be proud to display. Using a color capable printer, you can produce code listings that highlight Visual Basic's keywords, user variables, comments, literals, and page headings - each in a different color. Pretty Printer gives you a wide choice of fonts and styles to further professionalize your output. You may arrange the page layout to fit your needs, including setting margins, indentations, page headings, and page breaks. Connectors may be inserted to bracket your loop and logic code statements, making it easier to find errors or to mark reusable code. Pretty Printer is what you have needed to catch that hard to track down bug, or to impress that very important client. While Pretty Printer was designed for use with Visual Basic 3.0, it will produce enhanced listings for earlier versions of Basic. Pretty Printer is compatible with most printers supported by Windows. ***System Requirements*** Required: MSDOS 3.3 or later version. Windows 3.1 (and later versions), or Windows NT and compatibles. ***Installation from CIS Zipped File*** You must have VB 3.0 installed on your system or at least the files: CMDIALOG.VBX, COMMDLG.DLL, and VBRUN300.DLL. If you not have ANIBUTON.VBX, please copy it from this directory to your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. Then use File Manager to Run the VBPPDEMO.EXE file. The retail version provides all the DLL and VBX files and has an install program. If you have problems with the installation, check the "Compatibility Issues" select below. Also check to see if your device drivers and *.DLL files are current. Updating drivers and *.DLL files to the latest versions has fixed all sorts of odd problems. If you can not resolve your installation problems, contact AARDVARK Software for assistance. ***Getting Started*** To print a chosen project or file, open Pretty Printer. After the "About Notice" has cleared the screen, an Open File Common Dialog Box will appear. Select the project or file you wish to print, then click the "OK" button. To print immediately using Pretty Printer's default settings, and Windows default printer, click on the File Menu and select Print. A print option box will appear, make your selection and click "OK". That's all there is to it! Pretty Printer prints ASCII text files. The Visual Basic Programmer's Guide outlines the very real advantages of saving your code files in text format, and is worth reading. To get your code into text format do one of the following: (1) For a new project, go to the Visual Basic Options Menu - Environment Dialog Box. Select the option to save all of your project's code in text format. (2) To convert existing code files saved in binary format, go to the Visual Basic File Menu, and select the Save File As entry. When the dialog box appears, check the Save as Text box, then save the file using standard Windows conventions. (3) If you do not want to convert all of your code files to text format, you may use the File Menu - Save Text menu item to save a copy of any individual file for use with Pretty Printer. To refine the printed output, click on the Color, Font or Format items from Pretty Printer's Option Menu; or select Page Layout from the File Menu. To get a better understanding of these, and other features supported by Pretty Printer, use the Help Search Utility, the Help Contents screen , or press F1 for context sensitive help. ***New Features*** New features in 2.0 (6/94) Connectors (For/Next, Do/Loop, If/Elseif/End If) Project File handling On-line help Orphan handling User Interface improvements International - Metric margin settings Option for bold proc separator Bugs resolved New features in 1.2 (2/94) Ability to specify contents of page headings Long tokens are wrapped instead of truncated Prints table of contents as an option User interface changed (improved) Paint and setfocus eliminated where not needed New Features in 1.1 (1/94) Procedure selection (Sub/Function) Margin selection Option sets saved for each printer Automatic indentation option Option to suppress form description printing. Easier setting of all options ***Important Upgrading Information*** All upgraders to 2.0 (from 1.0, 1.1, 1.2) If you modified VBPP.KEY, you must make similar modifications in the new VBPP.KEY. The old VBPP.KEY files will not work, commas are now required. Also, a few of the entries were changed. If you are upgrading from VBPP 1.0: VBPP 1.1 saves printer settings for each printer while 1.0 kept just one entry. To preserve the settings (and provide for fallback), edit your VBPP.INI file: Copy the [Print] section and change the section header to [Print.name] where name is the name in the WIN.INI file. You may have as many [Print.name] sections as you wish. The [Print] section is used by 1.0, the others by 1.1. The resulting file should look like: [Print] FontAttr.Comments=0 -1 0 0 12 FontName.Comments=Courier 10 Pitch etc. [Print.HP DeskJet] FontAttr.Comments=0 -1 0 0 12 FontName.Comments=Courier 10 Pitch etc. ***VB Pretty Printer Compatibility Issues*** 1. - On the Ultra Script postscript software emulator from QMS by PM Ware V3.01, a few characters are lost at the beginning of each line. This appears to be their problem. 2 - Under HP dashboard + a network, one user has experienced system hangs and file/path not found. Runs OK from an icon. 3 - ATI VESA local video cards with the Mach 32 chip. With some driver versions, the print on a color printer may become garbled. Specifically, on an HP Deskjet 500C, parts of letters will not print. Solution, install the latest ATI driver. 4 - When installing VBPP you can get Warning- Cannot copy file A:\DDEML.DL_ since the destination file is already in use. Ignore the message - hit OK. 5 - A "Memory overflow" message on the hardware control panel of an HP LJ III with 1 Meg of memory can occur. The standard Windows 3.1 HPLJ III driver uses 1.5 MB blocks which can cause memory overflow on certain types of print jobs. The bypass is to define the printer as an HPLJ Series II printer and setting it to use 512k byte blocks or to upgrade the printer to 1.5MB. 6 - Tabs are not processed. The VB IDE converts the tab key to spaces. A user can enter tabs with other editors. VBPP does not process tabs. 7 - A user reported a GPF using IBM Lexmark printer with certain settings. This is a probable problem in VB or the printer driver. 8 - Using the Print Setup causes a blank page to be printed and the selected printer to become the system default printer. This is a 'feature' of VB's printer interface. 9 - System hangs after print requested, noticed when TEMP set to a Ram drive. This can be due to insufficient space for printer TEMP files. To bypass, increase the size of the RAM drive, or point the TEMP directory to a hard drive with more space. You can also decrease the size of the print file by using printer fonts (rather than true-type), and remove background colors. 10 - Multiple statements per line can cause indent or connector problems. If problems are encountered, split the lines. 11 - Very large tokens and programs can abort processing. The maximum token size is 2K, with a limit of 32K tokens per program. ***Frequently Asked Questions*** Q: Do I need a color printer to run VBPP? A: No, VBPP will make your listings look better whether you have a black & white or a color printer. Even on black & white printers, you can use bolding, italics, different fonts, and different sizes to make your listings more readable. On color printers, the results are outrageous. Q: What printers does VBPP support? A: VBPP should work with any printer that Windows supports. It has been used with impact printers, laser printers, ink jets, and even fax modems. Q: Does VBPP require Windows? A: Yes. It has been tested on Windows 3.1, Windows NT 3.5 and OS/2 2.1. It should work on other versions of Windows. Q: Does VBPP require Visual Basic 3.0? A: VBPP does not require any version of Visual Basic to be installed, it is self-contained and only requires Windows. Q: What dialects of BASIC does VBPP handle? A: VBPP is primarily designed for Visual Basic for Windows and its keyword lists are set to that dialect. It performs well with Visual Basic for Windows 1.0 and 2.0; Visual Basic for DOS, Quick BASIC, and even GWBASIC code. Q: Is the product guaranteed? A: Yes, if you are not satisfied, you may return it within 90 days for a full refund. Q: Is Pretty Printer integrated into Visual Basic? How do I print with Pretty Printer. A: Pretty Printer is a separate application from Visual Basic and runs in a separate window. Once you have started Visual Basic and Pretty Printer, you can switch to between them by using standard Windows commands such as ALT+TAB. This separation precludes problems in one product from causing problems in the other. Q: Does Pretty Printer produce an index or a cross- reference. A: Pretty Printer produces a Table of Contents which lists the procedures (SUBs and Functions) in a module in the order they appear. (It is not an index because an index is alphabetized. A variable cross-referencer is another type of product - Pretty Printer is not a cross-referencer.) Q: Does Pretty Printer work on binary files? A: Pretty Printer uses text files. That means that you should set your Options/Environment/Save As Default Format to Text. Existing projects can be quickly converted by using File/Save As/ and checking the "Save as Text" box. Whether you use Pretty Printer or not, Microsoft advises that you use text rather than binary format. If the binary format is corrupted, it is unrecoverable, while the text format can often be repaired with a text editor. Q: Can the demo version be enabled as production? Can you electronically ship the production version to me? A: While the demo version cannot be changed to production, we can e-mail the production version of the product to you via CompuServe e-mail. There is an additional S&H charge of $10.00, and we still ship the regular version to you. We need your CompuServe address. Sorry, we cannot ship to Internet, Prodigy, America OnLine and other services. ***File Distribution*** VBPPDEMO directory: README.TXT This file. VBPPDEMO.HLP Help file. VBPPDEMO.EXE Executable file. VBPPDEMO.KEY Keyword file. Windows\System directory ANIBUTION.VBX CMDIALOG.VBX COMMDLG.DLL VBRUN300.DLL Please send us your comments, suggestions and bug reports. If you like what we do, please tell your friends. If you don't like what we do, please tell us. *************************** * VB Pretty Printer * * Copyright 1993-1994 * * AARDVARK Software, Inc. * * 972 Sheffield Road * * Teaneck, NJ 07666 * * Voice: 1-201-833-4355 * * Fax: 1-201-833-1216 * * CIS: 70544,1372 * * All rights reserved. * ***************************