Problems with printing from an old dos app

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion (More info?)

"moose" <moose@a.pc> wrote in message
newsdsvsu$ct6$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk...

> Just started working in this new place that has an ancient database system
> thats written in ProIV or something along that lines (difficult to say as
> the guy that was here before me didn't believe in documenting anything!)
It
> seem have been upgraded over the years but is still printing using some
sort
> of Dos system or formating!
>
> When reports are printed on any machine thats new to the network it
doesn't
> print
> the formatting lines of the report it instead prints a bunch of jubberish
> character codes. So somethng has been changed on the old machines to allow
> them to print correctly but i've no idea what. I've installed all the
fonts
> from the other machines, i've even moved over all the dll's incase there
was
> something odd going on there that the program might be calling.
>
> The system prints to the default printer so some machines are printing to
a
> network printer using the same driver. The older ones work and the newer
> ones don't! so its not the driver. Its not restricted to one OS either as
i
> had to rebuild an old Win98SE machine last week and its got the same
> problem!
>
> I've no idea where i'm going wrong here!
>
> Anything else that prints, like word, excel or any other application is
> fine. Its just this damn thing!

The problem is rare since most users abandoned DOS
software -- for which you need printer-specific drivers
and either:
-- DOS-capable printer (e.g. Brother 1050); the huge
majority now are Windows-only;
-- some kind of intermediate software that can accept
DOS input (characters) and put it into a (graphic) Windows
format, e.g. GhostScript.

It would be faster to locate your predecessor and
ask for his printing method.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)