Pretty Printer for Visual Basic Copyright 1993-1995 All rights reserved. ***SUPPORT*** CompuServe: GO AARDVARK, 24 Hours-A-Day E-mail: 73173.1137@compuserve.com, 24 Hours-A-Day Fax: 1-201-833-1216, 24 Hours-A-Day Voice: 1-608-274-7159, M-F, 8 AM - 5 PM CT ***File Contents*** Overview System Requirements Installation Getting Started New Features Upgrading Compatibility Issues Frequently Asked Questions File Distribution ***Pretty Printer for Visual Basic 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, this new version of 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, ink jet or dot matrix, Pretty Printer will produce a listing you will be proud to display. Pretty Printer gives you a wide choice of fonts, styles and formats to further professionalize your output. You may arrange the page layout to fit your needs, including setting margins, indentations, number of columns, 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. 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. While Pretty Printer was designed for use with Visual Basic 3.0, it will produce enhanced listings for other versions of Visual Basic - and other Basic dialects. Pretty Printer is compatible with all printers supported by Windows. ***System Requirements*** Required: MSDOS 3.3 or later version. Windows 3.1x, Windows for Workgroups or Windows NT and compatibles. ***Installation*** Insert the disk in a floppy drive. If you have not already done so, start Microsoft Windows. Choose "Run" from the Program Manager File menu. At the command line type A:\Setup (If "A" is not your floppy drive letter, substitute the appropriate letter). Follow the setup instructions on the screen. If you are upgrading an earlier version of Pretty Printer, follow the same instructions - the older files will be over-written. Upgrade Note: In Pretty Printer version 2.1 VBPP.KEY was replaced by BASICLAN.KEY. Upon installation VBPP.KEY will not be overwritten. You may delete the file to save disk space, however, its presence will have no effect on running the current version of Pretty Printer. 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 open, 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 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. 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 2.1 (2/95) Code line continuations Multi-column printing User heading Connectors without Auto-Indent option Upgraded Help File CompuServe Forum Support Bugs resolved 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 2.1 (from 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0) VBPP 2.1 VBPP.INI file switches are coded to "yes/no." In previous versions, VBPP.INI switches were coded to -1/0. VBPP 2.1 will read either designation. Earlier versions equate both "yes" and "no" as false. If, after installing and running version 2.1, you return to an earlier version of Pretty Printer, you will lose your switch options. This may lead to confusion as no default values will be set either. If you anticipate running earlier versions of Pretty Printer it may be desirable to copy the current VBPP.INI file before installing Pretty Printer 2.1. If you modified VBPP.KEY, you must make similar modifications in the new BASICLAN.KEY. The old VBPP.KEY file will not work. ***Pretty Printer for Visual Basic 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 HP LJ 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 HP LJ Series II printer and setting it to use 512k byte blocks or to upgrade the printer to 1.5MB. 6 - Table of Contents out of sequence. By default Visual Basic sequences module procedures in alphanumeric order until the module reaches some indeterminate size. At that point Visual Basic adds new module procedures to the top of the list. VBPP prints code and Table of Contents in the order encountered. 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 4K, 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 for Workgroups, Windows NT 3.5, OS/2 2.1 and beta versions of Windows 95. 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 3.0, 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, QBasic, and even GWBASIC code. It has some knowledge of Visual Basic for Applications, Word Basic and Access Basic. 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 for an additional $10.00. We need your CompuServe address. Sorry, we cannot ship to Internet, Prodigy, America OnLine or other services. We still ship the regular version to you. ***File Distribution*** Pretty Printer for Visual Basic SETUP installs files on your hard disk as follows: VBPP directory: README.TXT This file. TEST1.BAS Example for, and to test VBPP. TEST2.FRM Example for, and to test VBPP. VBPP.HLP Help file. VBPP.EXE Executable file. BASICLAN.KEY Keyword file. WINSIZE.DLL Help support file. Windows\System directory ANIBUTION.VBX CMDIALOG.VBX COMMDLG.DLL VBRUN300.DLL These files are used by the setup processor and are normally present in the Windows\System directory: DDEML.DLL VER.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. ************************************* * Pretty Printer for Visual Basic * * Copyright 1993-1995 * * AARDVARK Software, Inc. * * 972 Sheffield Road * * Teaneck, NJ 07666 * * Voice: 1-201-833-4355 * * Fax: 1-201-833-1216 * * CIS: GO AARDVARK * * E-mail: 70544.1372@compuserve.com * * All rights reserved. * *************************************