• How to print entire .txt file

    From micky@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 13:36:48
    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++ stopped after 2
    pages of 15. Libreoffice did better, but using double sided printing,
    it prints the first 2 pages on both sides, but leaves the back of each
    later page blank, And it seems it skips text at that point, it's not
    that it just wastes one side of the paper. (Prints a total of 6.5 pages)
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    Background:
    A friend lent me his Android phone and I wanted to copy about 12 of his whatsapp chats to my PC. (I think last Jan or February I posted about
    the troubles getting it to the PC. One or two went with one method and
    the others required the second method.)

    Now I want to print them. They were each in separate zip filse which
    expanded to a .txt file. Eleven of them, I opened each in Notepad++ and printed with no problem.
    The 12th and by far the longest and most important one would only
    print 2 pages out of 15. Tried 3 times**.
    So instead I edited the same file with LibreOfffice and more of it
    printed, almost 7 pages but still not 15.
    It's 2-sided printing and the first 2 pages are on the same sheet of
    paper, but after that only one side gets printed on, and there are text
    gaps between the end of one page and the start of the next page, as if everything that is missing should be on the blank back of the sheet.
    Yet I've looked at the file on the screen in both Notepad++ and
    Librefoffice and unlike the emogies that stymied Notepad++, I don't see anything suspicious.


    **Extra quandary. (Very curious but even a good answer here is not as important as above, getting the file to print completely) Got no warning message on the PC like my printer usually gives, or on the printer,
    except once I found a new segment of the taskbar that said that I needed
    to update Outlook in order to make progress.
    I googled the message and sure enough that's a valid message. I
    googled "Does Notepad++ use Outlook", and found out that it can if I set
    it up, but I'd never set it up. In fact, I don't have Outlook or Word
    or anything from that group! So where did that message come from? Was
    this phishing?


    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.




    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.




    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Roger Mills@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 18:59:58
    On 18/07/2026 18:36, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++ stopped after 2
    pages of 15. Libreoffice did better, but using double sided printing,
    it prints the first 2 pages on both sides, but leaves the back of each
    later page blank, And it seems it skips text at that point, it's not
    that it just wastes one side of the paper. (Prints a total of 6.5 pages)
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    Background:
    A friend lent me his Android phone and I wanted to copy about 12 of his whatsapp chats to my PC. (I think last Jan or February I posted about
    the troubles getting it to the PC. One or two went with one method and
    the others required the second method.)

    Now I want to print them. They were each in separate zip filse which
    expanded to a .txt file. Eleven of them, I opened each in Notepad++ and printed with no problem.
    The 12th and by far the longest and most important one would only
    print 2 pages out of 15. Tried 3 times**.
    So instead I edited the same file with LibreOfffice and more of it printed, almost 7 pages but still not 15.
    It's 2-sided printing and the first 2 pages are on the same sheet of paper, but after that only one side gets printed on, and there are text
    gaps between the end of one page and the start of the next page, as if everything that is missing should be on the blank back of the sheet.
    Yet I've looked at the file on the screen in both Notepad++ and Librefoffice and unlike the emogies that stymied Notepad++, I don't see anything suspicious.


    **Extra quandary. (Very curious but even a good answer here is not as important as above, getting the file to print completely) Got no warning message on the PC like my printer usually gives, or on the printer,
    except once I found a new segment of the taskbar that said that I needed
    to update Outlook in order to make progress.
    I googled the message and sure enough that's a valid message. I
    googled "Does Notepad++ use Outlook", and found out that it can if I set
    it up, but I'd never set it up. In fact, I don't have Outlook or Word
    or anything from that group! So where did that message come from? Was
    this phishing?


    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.




    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.



    What happens if you export it as a PDF from Libre Office. Does the PDF
    file then look complete? If so, print that on your chosen printer.
    --
    Cheers,
    Roger

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 18:21:42
    micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:
    [...]

    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.

    Similar to Roger's advice:

    As it *displays* fine in Notepad++, print it in Notepad+++, but use "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the 'printer'.

    Now look at the PDF, if that still looks fine, just print the PDF from whatever PDF-viewer you use (I just use (Microsoft) Edge).

    So any emojis, smileys or other 'silly' graphics stuff will be taken
    care of the PDF-renderer.

    HTH.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Print Text@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 19:30:22
    On 18/07/2026 18:36, micky wrote:
    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++

    Have you tried using Microsoft Notepad? Why not? Is it because you think
    it's spying on you?

    If you're using Windows 11 and you still have WordPad installed, it's
    another Microsoft product worth trying.

    Windows 10 has both Notepad and WordPad, so try using those instead.

    Both Windows 10 and 11 allow you to save/print files as PDFs, so try
    doing this to avoid wasting paper and toner unnecessarily.

    To print to a LPT1 printer you need this simple command:

    copy /B yourfile.txt LPT1








    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Mr. Man-wai Chang@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 03:11:34
    On 7/19/2026 1:36 AM, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.
    .....
    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1
    ....
    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,

    You are having problem with the PRINT
    command (via "LPT1"), not about
    printing a big text file.

    You sure that your text file
    is really a plain-text file
    without strange codes and/or
    non-printable cahracters?
    That affects PRINT command.

    --

    @~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
    / v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
    /( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
    ^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
    The game is afoot... Meow...

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 15:13:51
    On Sat, 7/18/2026 1:36 PM, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++ stopped after 2
    pages of 15. Libreoffice did better, but using double sided printing,
    it prints the first 2 pages on both sides, but leaves the back of each
    later page blank, And it seems it skips text at that point, it's not
    that it just wastes one side of the paper. (Prints a total of 6.5 pages)
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    Background:
    A friend lent me his Android phone and I wanted to copy about 12 of his whatsapp chats to my PC. (I think last Jan or February I posted about
    the troubles getting it to the PC. One or two went with one method and
    the others required the second method.)

    Now I want to print them. They were each in separate zip filse which
    expanded to a .txt file. Eleven of them, I opened each in Notepad++ and printed with no problem.
    The 12th and by far the longest and most important one would only
    print 2 pages out of 15. Tried 3 times**.
    So instead I edited the same file with LibreOfffice and more of it
    printed, almost 7 pages but still not 15.
    It's 2-sided printing and the first 2 pages are on the same sheet of
    paper, but after that only one side gets printed on, and there are text
    gaps between the end of one page and the start of the next page, as if everything that is missing should be on the blank back of the sheet.
    Yet I've looked at the file on the screen in both Notepad++ and Librefoffice and unlike the emogies that stymied Notepad++, I don't see anything suspicious.


    **Extra quandary. (Very curious but even a good answer here is not as important as above, getting the file to print completely) Got no warning message on the PC like my printer usually gives, or on the printer,
    except once I found a new segment of the taskbar that said that I needed
    to update Outlook in order to make progress.
    I googled the message and sure enough that's a valid message. I
    googled "Does Notepad++ use Outlook", and found out that it can if I set
    it up, but I'd never set it up. In fact, I don't have Outlook or Word
    or anything from that group! So where did that message come from? Was
    this phishing?

    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.

    If there was something like an End-Of-Text character or a control character
    not regularly used, maybe that could break something.

    You can see we live in a world that is hopelessly broken.

    https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187169/how-to-detect-the-encoding-of-a-file

    In WSL2, I like to use the "file" command, because on a couple occasions
    it has detected a "binary blob" (file system cluster that does not belong)
    in the middle of a text file. And the reason "file" can do that,
    is it has 100 different detections for text files. Some of the
    descriptions, you can tell right by looking at the description, that this
    is no ordinary text file.

    file SomeFileAndExtensionNotNecessary # There can be 100 different answers, for text

    In more than one Google result, there is the suggestion of loading
    into Firefox. As we expect the parser in there, to be above average
    when it comes to parsing and rendering

    firefox.exe MyStrangeFile.txt # Use View : Character Encoding

    ( http://codeftw.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-to-find-character-encoding-of-text.html )

    *******

    It's actually "hard" to guarantee a visitor here, a solution to this problem.

    Each one of these, is a Times crossword puzzle. It's easier for
    software to make "bad files" than "good files", and then who knows
    how many hammers and chisels will be needed to return the file
    to a "usable" state.

    This never would have happened in the ASCII days.
    Why did I ever throw out that Underwood typewriter...

    *******

    While you could feed this to an LLM-AI, the input method would
    be almost as tricky, as fixing the file in the first place :-)
    You would need the hex output of HxD as a representation, and
    then you might run out of context space. That's because we want
    to encourage the LLM-AI to do a "literal" analysis and not
    a "semantic" analysis. We don't want the LLM-AI writing
    a summary of the message content, we want a byte by byte analysis
    for broken encodings in mid-stream.

    It's hard to say, whether an LLM-AI has the training set and
    the chops, to do a good job of this, and this would be a
    reflection of what percentage of the human population knows
    how to do this task properly.

    When a print job won't finish, something is "seriously broken", right ???

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 21:48:38
    On 2026/7/18 18:36:48, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    It obviously isn't a pure text file. (From the subject, I was expecting
    you to say it's a problem with file size, but 2 - or even 15 - pages is
    not a big file.)

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    When you say "Win11 Pro", do you mean the Notepad that comes with it?
    (If you're not sure, and you're just double-clicking on the file, do a
    Help | About from whatever opens to display it, though I _think_ it
    identifies itself in the title bar anyway.)

    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++ stopped after 2
    pages of 15. Libreoffice did better, but using double sided printing,
    it prints the first 2 pages on both sides, but leaves the back of each
    later page blank, And it seems it skips text at that point, it's not
    that it just wastes one side of the paper. (Prints a total of 6.5 pages)
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    Double-sided printing is not a function of a text file; it's a function
    of your printer and its driver. (What printer? [Have you tried another printer?])

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    Have you tried with a colon after the lpt1, or PRN:? It used to be the
    case that just

    COPY filename(including extension) PRN:

    would work, but that was with older printers that accepted ASCII. (As
    another has suggested, adding the /B switch [after COPY] might help.) I
    suspect modern printers don't know what to do with pure ASCII, unless
    there's some ruling that they have to. (Which they might ignore anyway.)

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,

    I doubt it does actually have anything to do with Python. (My guess is
    that it misinterpreted the P in the name/extension.)

    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No

    Again, that relates to old printers that can take plain ASCII (if you go
    back far enough, that's _all_ they _could_ take). But that tends to be
    back in the days when they were connected via a parallel port (or
    occasionally a serial one), though there _might_ be a few USB-connected
    ones that can still take plain ASCII. I suspect not, however.

    [COPY CON: PRN: used to turn your computer and printer into a very
    expensive typewriter, though you sometimes had to end with a Ctrl-Z -
    end of file - before anything would happen. (I still very occasionally
    use COPY CON: <filename> if I want a one-line batch file, rather than
    using Edit or Notepad.)]

    mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    Did you try PRN:? (And without the colon. And LPT1:?)

    [If you play with the COPY command, check afterwards - if you have just
    made files with names like PRN, LPT1, and the like, with the same size
    as the file you're trying to print, then you're not using the command
    right.)
    []
    The 12th and by far the longest and most important one would only
    print 2 pages out of 15. Tried 3 times**.
    So instead I edited the same file with LibreOfffice and more of it
    printed, almost 7 pages but still not 15.
    It's 2-sided printing and the first 2 pages are on the same sheet of

    I repeat, being 2-sided isn't going to be a property of a text file; a
    text file knows nothing of such matters.

    paper, but after that only one side gets printed on, and there are text
    gaps between the end of one page and the start of the next page, as if everything that is missing should be on the blank back of the sheet.
    Yet I've looked at the file on the screen in both Notepad++ and Librefoffice and unlike the emogies that stymied Notepad++, I don't see anything suspicious.

    It _sounds_ like there is/are some special byte(s) in the file that are
    not plain text. Do you have a hex viewer (ideally editor)? I have
    FSHexEdit, but there are plenty such. If you do, and you can find
    something odd, replace it with byte(s) of hex 20 (decimal 32) - which is
    a space. (Work on a copy of the file.)

    Also, as others have suggested, try "printing" it to PDF, if you've got
    it in something (doesn't matter what) that _displays_ it beyond the
    trouble point; I use pdf995, because I am used to that, but I gather
    Windows 10 and later may have their own "print" to PDF function, as do
    later versions of Office I think. (Obviously, and then print the PDF, if
    it views OK.)

    Oh - idle thought: have you tried printing it from page 3 onwards, or
    whatever (assuming whatever you're displaying it in has that facility)?

    **Extra quandary. (Very curious but even a good answer here is not as important as above, getting the file to print completely) Got no warning message on the PC like my printer usually gives, or on the printer,
    except once I found a new segment of the taskbar that said that I needed
    to update Outlook in order to make progress.
    I googled the message and sure enough that's a valid message. I
    googled "Does Notepad++ use Outlook", and found out that it can if I set
    it up, but I'd never set it up. In fact, I don't have Outlook or Word
    or anything from that group! So where did that message come from? Was
    this phishing?

    Sorry, no idea.

    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one

    (Nor do I.)

    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.



    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.



    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Nans are the best ... like superheroes, but with better biscuits.
    - Casualty, 2025-7-12

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 22:03:10
    On 2026/7/18 21:48:38, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/18 18:36:48, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.
    []
    It _sounds_ like there is/are some special byte(s) in the file that are
    not plain text. Do you have a hex viewer (ideally editor)? I have
    FSHexEdit, but there are plenty such. If you do, and you can find
    something odd, replace it with byte(s) of hex 20 (decimal 32) - which is
    a space. (Work on a copy of the file.)
    []
    If you _haven't_ got a hex editor, then in whatever you _are_ viewing it
    in, go to the trouble point, and delete from just after the beginning of
    the first line of text after it, back to just before the end of the last
    line before it, retype the charaters you've deleted (plus a few
    newlines), and try again. That _should_ delete anything unusual.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From knuttle@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 17:44:42
    On 07/18/2026 1:36 PM, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++ stopped after 2
    pages of 15. Libreoffice did better, but using double sided printing,
    it prints the first 2 pages on both sides, but leaves the back of each
    later page blank, And it seems it skips text at that point, it's not
    that it just wastes one side of the paper. (Prints a total of 6.5 pages)
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    Background:
    A friend lent me his Android phone and I wanted to copy about 12 of his whatsapp chats to my PC. (I think last Jan or February I posted about
    the troubles getting it to the PC. One or two went with one method and
    the others required the second method.)

    Now I want to print them. They were each in separate zip filse which
    expanded to a .txt file. Eleven of them, I opened each in Notepad++ and printed with no problem.
    The 12th and by far the longest and most important one would only
    print 2 pages out of 15. Tried 3 times**.
    So instead I edited the same file with LibreOfffice and more of it printed, almost 7 pages but still not 15.
    It's 2-sided printing and the first 2 pages are on the same sheet of paper, but after that only one side gets printed on, and there are text
    gaps between the end of one page and the start of the next page, as if everything that is missing should be on the blank back of the sheet.
    Yet I've looked at the file on the screen in both Notepad++ and Librefoffice and unlike the emogies that stymied Notepad++, I don't see anything suspicious.


    **Extra quandary. (Very curious but even a good answer here is not as important as above, getting the file to print completely) Got no warning message on the PC like my printer usually gives, or on the printer,
    except once I found a new segment of the taskbar that said that I needed
    to update Outlook in order to make progress.
    I googled the message and sure enough that's a valid message. I
    googled "Does Notepad++ use Outlook", and found out that it can if I set
    it up, but I'd never set it up. In fact, I don't have Outlook or Word
    or anything from that group! So where did that message come from? Was
    this phishing?


    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.




    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.



    You say you tried libreOffice. When it was opened in LibreOffice Could
    you see see all of the text in the file? Are the all character readable?

    What is the extension of the file you friend gave you?

    Can you import it into your phone and see all of the text.

    In the worst case and if you can get the whole thing readable in
    notepad. If you can scroll through the file, looking for repeating odd characters. If so these are probably the end of conversation marker.

    Go through and copy the text BETWEEN the repeated characters copy them
    to a second copy of notepad or LibreOffice and print that text. repeat
    until you have printed the whole file.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 19:55:05
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on 18 Jul 2026 18:21:42 GMT, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

    micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:
    [...]

    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.

    Similar to Roger's advice:

    thanks to both of you.

    As it *displays* fine in Notepad++, print it in Notepad+++, but use
    "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the 'printer'.

    Oh, this is so easy.

    Now look at the PDF, if that still looks fine, just print the PDF from
    whatever PDF-viewer you use (I just use (Microsoft) Edge).

    This was easy too. I used Firefox, and it only printed 2 of what it
    said would be 12 pages. So I switched to Edge, and it only printed 1. Although when I got them off the printer, both had only printed the same amount, one side of one page.

    Any other ideas? Below I talk about doing it almost a paragraph at a
    time if I have to.

    Oh, I'm looking this up again now, but if you know off the top of your
    head: How do I write straight to the printer, using a cmd box or
    PowerShell bos. This didzn't work:

    print "C:\Data\Scam\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) 446-nnnn.txt" lpt1
    and it didn't work when I changed lpt1 to the printer name, the port
    name or the IP address.

    So any emojis, smileys or other 'silly' graphics stuff will be taken
    care of the PDF-renderer.

    The first smiley is more than a page after it stops printing. And the
    copy printed from Libreoffice, did print most or all of the graphics.

    And I've looked at the text just before it stops printing and for 30
    lines afterwards, and I've looked before and after the places it starts printing again, and I don't see anything different.

    I have to have this for a Social Security hearing on Wednesday, plus I
    need a ocuple hours before I go to color-highlight the important
    passages. I think I do have anough in the part that printed, plus the
    other 11 chats that total maybe 8 pages, to convince the hearing
    officer. (Plus his father has non-computer stuff.) And maybe 8 more
    pages won't matter, plus I'm bringing my laptop in case he wants to see
    what's missing. (I think I posted about this before, a young friend who
    is being scammed, including in one chat he says he is short of money but
    will get $1025 in next month's SSA disablity check, to give to the
    scammers. That is certainly right on point and that line did print. His
    parents want to be the payee for his disability check so he doesn't
    waste any more money, and the law provides for lay testimony of
    incompetence like mine would be. (It also accepts legally-declared incompetence and medical testimony. I presume my friend has letters from
    the psychiatists especially when from his son was in the locked psych
    wards a few time. So so sad.)

    He's also sent small amounts to three guys from Kenya, and he gave the
    major scammer his father's full name and credit card number. Yikes. If
    I don't have that one already, I can print screen shots, or better yet,
    first I'm going to send the whole thing to the win10 computer, which is
    one room away from the printer, instead of one flight of stairs. Then
    maybe I can make new files from the parts that won't print and trim them
    down until they do print and maybe figure out where the problem is. This
    is too hard to do when I have to go up and down stairs.

    I think he's already sent hundreds of dollars or more to the main
    scammer. Now they want 500 more. The story is that some woman in Spain
    wants to give him $200,000 so that he can give 90% to orphans in
    Pakistan, even though she's never met him and he's not famous, and she
    wouild have no idea if he'll do it (if she really existed). And now
    supposedly she is dead, and uncompleted gifts are void when someone
    dies. But he doesn't care.

    Meanwhile he's an honorable guy and upset that health insurance is
    spending so much money on him. So I ask him, why are you giving away
    money when you could be paying part of your medical care or the expenses
    you've incurred for your parents. And he said, This is not my money.
    It's the money from the donor, except it IS his money, from SSA
    disability or his parents. If there were expenses regarding the gift,
    they would be deducted from the gift. He's a smart guy when it comes to
    other stuff, but here he doesn't care.

    HTH.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Mr. Man-wai Chang@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 08:48:56
    On 7/19/2026 5:03 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    If you _haven't_ got a hex editor, then in whatever you _are_ viewing it
    in, go to the trouble point, and delete from just after the beginning of
    the first line of text after it, back to just before the end of the last
    line before it, retype the charaters you've deleted (plus a few
    newlines), and try again. That _should_ delete anything unusual.


    You speak like cursing us. :)

    --

    @~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
    / v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
    /( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
    ^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
    The game is afoot... Meow...

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 01:50:34
    On 2026/7/19 0:55:5, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on 18 Jul 2026 18:21:42 GMT, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
    []
    As it *displays* fine in Notepad++, print it in Notepad+++, but use
    "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the 'printer'.

    Oh, this is so easy.

    So you have a PDF that appears to show the same text?

    Now look at the PDF, if that still looks fine, just print the PDF from
    whatever PDF-viewer you use (I just use (Microsoft) Edge).

    This was easy too. I used Firefox, and it only printed 2 of what it
    said would be 12 pages. So I switched to Edge, and it only printed 1. Although when I got them off the printer, both had only printed the same amount, one side of one page.

    Now try - in Firefox or Edge, or perhaps a standalone PDF viewer like
    Acrobat or whatever else you have - printing it *from page 3 onwards*.
    (3 to 12 if you have to say.) Edge and most PDF viewers have the
    facility to select which pages to print.

    Any other ideas? Below I talk about doing it almost a paragraph at a
    time if I have to.

    Oh, I'm looking this up again now, but if you know off the top of your
    head: How do I write straight to the printer, using a cmd box or
    PowerShell bos. This didzn't work:
    []
    The first smiley is more than a page after it stops printing. And the
    copy printed from Libreoffice, did print most or all of the graphics.

    If there are graphics in it, IT ISN'T A TEXT FILE. but if the stop point
    is before where you think the graphics were, then there's probably
    something invisible in it. Look with a hex editor, and null it out with
    spaces (hex character 20). It should contain no byte above 7E, nor below
    20 other than 0D and 0A (and possibly 09).

    And I've looked at the text just before it stops printing and for 30
    lines afterwards, and I've looked before and after the places it starts printing again, and I don't see anything different.

    You've looked with things that look at text. Look with a Hex
    viewer/editor. https://www.searchandreplace.com/fshexedit.htm is one such.
    []
    Failing that, print - from Acrobat or other PDF viewer, or Edge or
    Firefox - one page at a time. Don't mess with double-sided - if
    absolutely necessary to have double-sided, print the odd pages, one at a
    time, then you can feed the paper back into the printer to get even
    pages printed on the other sides.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    ... a series about a grumpy old man who lives in a phone box is
    unlikely to have been commissioned these days. 798 episodes later ...

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 21:17:12
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:50:34 +0100, "J. P.
    Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

    On 2026/7/19 0:55:5, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on 18 Jul 2026 18:21:42 GMT, Frank Slootweg
    <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
    []
    As it *displays* fine in Notepad++, print it in Notepad+++, but use
    "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the 'printer'.

    Oh, this is so easy.

    So you have a PDF that appears to show the same text?

    Yes.

    Now look at the PDF, if that still looks fine, just print the PDF from
    whatever PDF-viewer you use (I just use (Microsoft) Edge).

    This was easy too. I used Firefox, and it only printed 2 of what it
    said would be 12 pages. So I switched to Edge, and it only printed 1.
    Although when I got them off the printer, both had only printed the same
    amount, one side of one page.

    Now try - in Firefox or Edge, or perhaps a standalone PDF viewer like
    Acrobat or whatever else you have - printing it *from page 3 onwards*.

    Good idea.

    (3 to 12 if you have to say.) Edge and most PDF viewers have the
    facility to select which pages to print.

    Any other ideas? Below I talk about doing it almost a paragraph at a
    time if I have to.

    Oh, I'm looking this up again now, but if you know off the top of your
    head: How do I write straight to the printer, using a cmd box or
    PowerShell bos. This didzn't work:
    []
    The first smiley is more than a page after it stops printing. And the
    copy printed from Libreoffice, did print most or all of the graphics.

    If there are graphics in it, IT ISN'T A TEXT FILE. but if the stop point
    is before where you think the graphics were, then there's probably
    something invisible in it. Look with a hex editor, and null it out with >spaces (hex character 20). It should contain no byte above 7E, nor below
    20 other than 0D and 0A (and possibly 09).

    Very good idea. Would take some time. I have until Tuesday.

    And I've looked at the text just before it stops printing and for 30
    lines afterwards, and I've looked before and after the places it starts
    printing again, and I don't see anything different.

    You've looked with things that look at text. Look with a Hex
    viewer/editor. https://www.searchandreplace.com/fshexedit.htm is one such.
    []
    Failing that, print - from Acrobat or other PDF viewer, or Edge or
    Firefox - one page at a time. Don't mess with double-sided - if
    absolutely necessary to have double-sided, print the odd pages, one at a >time, then you can feed the paper back into the printer to get even
    pages printed on the other sides.

    Also a good idea.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 21:32:18
    On Sat, 7/18/2026 7:55 PM, micky wrote:


    This was easy too. I used Firefox, and it only printed 2 of what it
    said would be 12 pages. So I switched to Edge, and it only printed 1. Although when I got them off the printer, both had only printed the same amount, one side of one page.

    Any other ideas? Below I talk about doing it almost a paragraph at a
    time if I have to.

    Oh, I'm looking this up again now, but if you know off the top of your
    head: How do I write straight to the printer, using a cmd box or
    PowerShell bos. This didzn't work:

    print "C:\Data\Scam\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) 446-nnnn.txt" lpt1
    and it didn't work when I changed lpt1 to the printer name, the port
    name or the IP address.

    Feeding it to Firefox, was an attempt to use a "capable" software
    to work with the file.

    But at some point, you have to conclude there is something wrong
    with the file, and you have to switch to forensics mode and figure
    out just what that is.

    https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

    There are some control characters, that if they were present in
    the file, they would "stop input" when parsed.

    None of your conversion processes so far, would suffer from
    stack overflow or out-of-memory conditions for the software
    doing the work.

    If we were back in the ASCII era, I'd tell you to do a frequency
    analysis, read the file character by character, and see if any
    low-value (control) characters were in the file. You can't do that
    with some of the newer representations. They're likely to need
    eight bit transparency to work. Frequency analysis would be (mostly)
    a waste of time.

    *******

    How many "conversion processes" has this file been through ?

    Is this the output of a formatted printing process ?

    How was this supposed to be text in the first place ?

    Were you offered copy/paste and the copy picked up
    non-content characters as well as the content ?

    *******

    Go to the dirty device. Take screen shots of the text.
    Using Snippingtool, open the pictures and use the cluster
    of eight icons at the top middle of SnippingTool. The sixth
    icon over (next to those two rotate buttons) is the "scan text"
    button. It will convert visual characters into a text string
    you can copy. It does a poor job on formatted or table text,
    but should do a great job on paragraphs of one-column-text.

    Using that, you can get a copy of "clean" characters without
    any hidden binary crap in it.

    Even Firefox has a screenshot option. One of its options is
    to screenshot everything within the window (no matter how
    many scroll-downs it would take to view it all). Then feed that
    image file to snippingtool.exe . I keep SnippingTool pinned to
    my Task Bar.

    Paul


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 21:46:46
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 17:44:42 -0400, knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:

    On 07/18/2026 1:36 PM, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++ stopped after 2
    pages of 15. Libreoffice did better, but using double sided printing,
    it prints the first 2 pages on both sides, but leaves the back of each
    later page blank, And it seems it skips text at that point, it's not
    that it just wastes one side of the paper. (Prints a total of 6.5 pages)
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No
    mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    Background:
    A friend lent me his Android phone and I wanted to copy about 12 of his
    whatsapp chats to my PC. (I think last Jan or February I posted about
    the troubles getting it to the PC. One or two went with one method and
    the others required the second method.)

    Now I want to print them. They were each in separate zip filse which
    expanded to a .txt file. Eleven of them, I opened each in Notepad++ and
    printed with no problem.
    The 12th and by far the longest and most important one would only
    print 2 pages out of 15. Tried 3 times**.
    So instead I edited the same file with LibreOfffice and more of it
    printed, almost 7 pages but still not 15.
    It's 2-sided printing and the first 2 pages are on the same sheet of
    paper, but after that only one side gets printed on, and there are text
    gaps between the end of one page and the start of the next page, as if
    everything that is missing should be on the blank back of the sheet.
    Yet I've looked at the file on the screen in both Notepad++ and
    Librefoffice and unlike the emogies that stymied Notepad++, I don't see
    anything suspicious.


    **Extra quandary. (Very curious but even a good answer here is not as
    important as above, getting the file to print completely) Got no warning
    message on the PC like my printer usually gives, or on the printer,
    except once I found a new segment of the taskbar that said that I needed
    to update Outlook in order to make progress.
    I googled the message and sure enough that's a valid message. I
    googled "Does Notepad++ use Outlook", and found out that it can if I set
    it up, but I'd never set it up. In fact, I don't have Outlook or Word
    or anything from that group! So where did that message come from? Was
    this phishing?


    After trying Notepad++ I looked at the file, 99.9% text, but there were
    a couple smiley emoticons or emojees (I don't know the difference), one
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.




    stopped after 1 page (of 15) 3 times. It displayed just fine.



    You say you tried libreOffice. When it was opened in LibreOffice Could
    you see see all of the text in the file? Are the all character readable?

    Yes, I could see the whole file and all was readable.

    What is the extension of the file you friend gave you?

    He just lent me his phone, and in order to export the Whatsapp chats, I
    had trouble, reported in a thread at the end of January or start of
    February this year. I don't remember the details, but the upshot is, it creates a zip file that it did send to my PC. Inside the zip file was
    only one file, which it called .txt. Maybe it's not really, but the
    blame is on whatsapp. :-)

    Can you import it into your phone and see all of the text.

    I haven't tried.

    In the worst case and if you can get the whole thing readable in
    notepad. If you can scroll through the file, looking for repeating odd >characters. If so these are probably the end of conversation marker.

    Go through and copy the text BETWEEN the repeated characters copy them
    to a second copy of notepad or LibreOffice and print that text. repeat >until you have printed the whole file.

    Yes, that might do it but what a pain.


    Well, I hope to reply to each of you, but because you are the last
    poster replying directly to me, I will say what's probably the end of
    the story.

    I sent an email to myself with the file attached. Opened it with
    Notepad++ on the upstairs win10 computer, and printed it from there, and
    it printed completely on the first try!!!! 2-sided even, Almost 13
    pages, 7 sheets.

    A victory for win10!!!. I hope you win10 guys appreciate this.

    And a good reazon for me not to have retired my older computer.

    Unlike win11, in one small aspect it didn't display or print as well in
    win10. Because it's a chat, every line starts with the date and time.
    Between the time numbers and AM or PM, in one of the programs on win11,
    it showed the outline of a little square box, but in win10 Notepad++ on
    screen and printed, it shows NNBSP. Narrow No-Break Space (Unicode
    character U+202F)
    In the printed version it's darkly shaded and the letters are very
    hard to make out. It makes every line 4 characters longer but I don't
    think that matters here. I updated Notepad++ to the most recent
    version, but it didn't change. Downstairs, nothing shows on the screen
    in any but that one program, and for all the various Page 1's that I
    printed, it's just one blank space between the numbers,
    for example 9:45 PM.

    But this was not the cause of the problem because thisappears for every
    entry, almost every sentence, from the first line until the last.

    I will try to find the problem and get back to you all, but I've looked
    already and I know I'll lose interest soon.

    Thanks again eveyone.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 21:48:24
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:30:22 +0100, Print
    Text <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 18/07/2026 18:36, micky wrote:
    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++

    Have you tried using Microsoft Notepad? Why not? Is it because you think >it's spying on you?

    No, LOL It's because somehow it always takes too much paper, but I
    tried it just now because you are suggesting I should and it was going
    to print 35 page instead of 17. It's not just a waste of paper. I
    think it's off-putting to anyone including the hearing officer when I
    hand him a stack that thick.

    If you're using Windows 11 and you still have WordPad installed, it's >another Microsoft product worth trying.

    I installed Wordpad. I knew about these variious programs but I was
    hoping one of you knew in advance one that is known to bulldoze through
    the kind of problem I'm having.

    Windows 10 has both Notepad and WordPad, so try using those instead.

    I'll get back to you.

    Both Windows 10 and 11 allow you to save/print files as PDFs, so try
    doing this to avoid wasting paper and toner unnecessarily.

    To print to a LPT1 printer you need this simple command:

    copy /B yourfile.txt LPT1

    Yes, using copy instead of print. I forgot that it should be copy, an
    actual DOS command. However it says

    The system cannot find the file specified. I made a new copy of the
    file with a simple name that coudl not be misspelled. Could "lpt1" be
    the file that cannot be found? YES!!!! It could be, because when I
    changed to the port name instead of LPT1, it copied it!!!. But... :-(
    when I went to the printer there was nothing there.

    Problem not really solved but evaded. See the end of my reply to
    Knuttle.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 18, 2026 22:54:51
    On Sat, 7/18/2026 9:46 PM, micky wrote:
    Narrow No-Break Space (Unicode
    character U+202F)

    Freaky stuff. Should be fun doing a "Replace"
    in a text editor.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space

    Maybe eventually the max width of a line was exceeded ?

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 00:09:26
    On Sat, 7/18/2026 10:54 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 7/18/2026 9:46 PM, micky wrote:
    Narrow No-Break Space (Unicode
    character U+202F)

    Freaky stuff. Should be fun doing a "Replace"
    in a text editor.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space

    Maybe eventually the max width of a line was exceeded ?

    Paul


    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36219878/whatsapp-export-is-there-a-unicode-emoticon-compressing-convention

    Looking into the hexadecimal representation of the emoticons (only):

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... Dump
    ee 81 9a ee 84 8c ee 84 9c .????? Softbank encoding <=== WhatsApp

    instead of

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b ... Dump
    f0 9f 92 a9 f0 9f 91 bd f0 9f 92 80 ???????«???? Unicode version

    and that means there could be some turbulence near the
    non-text bits.

    When they say things like this, they're also avoiding
    all the details of what hides in there.

    "WhatsApp uses UTF-8 encoding for `_chat.txt` exports."

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Herbert Kleebauer@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 09:41:28
    On 7/19/2026 3:46 AM, micky wrote:

    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    I will try to find the problem and get back to you all, but I've looked already and I know I'll lose interest soon.

    I think, the problem is not the text file or the program
    you use to print it, but the HW of the printer, the communication
    (what do you use, USB or WLAN) or the printer driver.

    Seems you can print at least one page, so for a fast
    work around:

    Open the text file in any program where you can specify the
    pages to print (any word processing program or even Firefox).
    Print page one, then in a new print job print page 3, then
    page 5 and so on. Then reinsert the paper to print page 2,4,..
    on the back site.




    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 09:16:43
    On 2026/7/19 2:17:12, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:50:34 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    Now try - in Firefox or Edge, or perhaps a standalone PDF viewer like
    Acrobat or whatever else you have - printing it *from page 3 onwards*.

    Good idea.

    Have you tried? Did it work?
    []
    If there are graphics in it, IT ISN'T A TEXT FILE. but if the stop point
    is before where you think the graphics were, then there's probably
    something invisible in it. Look with a hex editor, and null it out with
    spaces (hex character 20). It should contain no byte above 7E, nor below
    20 other than 0D and 0A (and possibly 09).

    (It _might_ contain 00 bytes every second character; that's not strictly
    a text file, but might still have a .txt extension.)

    Very good idea. Would take some time. I have until Tuesday.

    To install a hex editor (such as the below) - five minutes maybe?
    Quarter of an hour at most; it isn't a complicated process. To find the relevant part, not long - if you haven't used a hex editor before, it
    looks like https://255soft.uk/temp/FSH.jpg - as you will see, it shows
    the hex values, but also their rendering into text. Many have a "Find" function, as I have shown for FSHexEdit, where you can search for a
    string (unfortunately you can only search for a single character if it's
    an alternating-00 file like the one shown, but hopefully yours won't
    be); thus you should be able to find the text just before the stop point relatively easily (even if you have to scroll rather than search) - it
    should take less time than it has me to type this paragraph. You should
    be able to see if there are any bytes other than plain text - with 0d-0a
    pairs (carriage return-line feed) at line breaks - and replace them with
    spaces (20 hex, though in FSH you can click in the text part and then
    just type spaces).

    And I've looked at the text just before it stops printing and for 30
    lines afterwards, and I've looked before and after the places it starts
    printing again, and I don't see anything different.

    Another thing you _might_ try: open it in Notepad (probably not
    Notepad+, or ++, or +++), and just save it, using Save As, so you save
    it as a different name; experiment with the encoding options Notepad
    offers. One of those might produce something printable. (But try
    printing from page 3 on - or one page at a time - from the PDF first.)
    []
    viewer/editor. https://www.searchandreplace.com/fshexedit.htm is one such. >> []
    Failing that, print - from Acrobat or other PDF viewer, or Edge or
    Firefox - one page at a time. Don't mess with double-sided - if
    absolutely necessary to have double-sided, print the odd pages, one at a
    time, then you can feed the paper back into the printer to get even
    pages printed on the other sides.

    Also a good idea.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    gazing at someone in distress is prurient and rude.
    - Alison Graham, RT 2015/6/20-26

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 09:27:55
    On 2026/7/19 2:46:46, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 17:44:42 -0400, knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:

    On 07/18/2026 1:36 PM, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.
    []
    Well, I hope to reply to each of you, but because you are the last
    poster replying directly to me, I will say what's probably the end of
    the story.

    I sent an email to myself with the file attached. Opened it with
    Notepad++ on the upstairs win10 computer, and printed it from there, and
    it printed completely on the first try!!!! 2-sided even, Almost 13
    pages, 7 sheets.

    So, problem solved, or at least circumvented!

    A victory for win10!!!. I hope you win10 guys appreciate this.

    And a good reazon for me not to have retired my older computer.

    We do and it is!

    Unlike win11, in one small aspect it didn't display or print as well in win10. Because it's a chat, every line starts with the date and time. Between the time numbers and AM or PM, in one of the programs on win11,
    it showed the outline of a little square box, but in win10 Notepad++ on screen and printed, it shows NNBSP. Narrow No-Break Space (Unicode
    character U+202F)

    Clearly NOT a "text file".

    In the printed version it's darkly shaded and the letters are very
    hard to make out. It makes every line 4 characters longer but I don't
    think that matters here. I updated Notepad++ to the most recent
    version, but it didn't change. Downstairs, nothing shows on the screen
    in any but that one program, and for all the various Page 1's that I
    printed, it's just one blank space between the numbers,
    for example 9:45 PM.

    But this was not the cause of the problem because thisappears for every entry, almost every sentence, from the first line until the last.

    No, there was obviously some other control character, that you'd be able
    to see with a hex viewer - if you bother now. (I'd say at least install
    a hex viewer/editor, if you haven't already - it can be useful in the
    future.)

    I will try to find the problem and get back to you all, but I've looked already and I know I'll lose interest soon.

    Thanks again eveyone.

    You're welcome.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    gazing at someone in distress is prurient and rude.
    - Alison Graham, RT 2015/6/20-26

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From JJ@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 17:40:34
    On Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:36:48 -0400, micky wrote:
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    You'll need to use `net use` to map a network shared printer to a new DOS device name. Use `net view \\computername` to get the shared printer name on that <computername>.

    If I'm not mistaken, a? shared printer which is not mapped via `net use`
    won't have a DOS device name.

    You can use `net use` to check whether or not, a shared printer is already mapped and has an assigned DOS device name.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 10:18:49
    On Sun, 7/19/2026 4:27 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 2:46:46, micky wrote:


    Unlike win11, in one small aspect it didn't display or print as well in
    win10. Because it's a chat, every line starts with the date and time.
    Between the time numbers and AM or PM, in one of the programs on win11,
    it showed the outline of a little square box, but in win10 Notepad++ on
    screen and printed, it shows NNBSP. Narrow No-Break Space (Unicode
    character U+202F)

    Clearly NOT a "text file".

    Clearly a text file.

    https://www.threadrecap.com/en/blog/whatsapp-export-zip-now-what

    `_chat.txt` is a plain UTF-8 text file. <=== the quote characters here, tell you an AI wrote this...

    Every "message" occupies one line (or continues on the next line if it contains a line break). The format is consistent:
    ^^^^^^^^

    [DD/MM/YYYY, HH:MM:SS] Sender Name: Message body here

    And that's the nature of the problem. In an attempt to make "one line" out
    of everything, they use an excessive number of NNBSP. The usage of
    such things, is demonstrated here.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space

    That means (the UTF-8) part, you *can't* just ram it into some LPT1,
    *unless* the thing at the end is ready for UTF-8.

    The other problem I've detected so far, is mention of emoji in WhatsApp
    being encoded in SoftBank format, instead of the official UTF-8 . This
    means, automatically, all hell will break loose, unless something
    "scans" the file and changes the three-byte Emoji into four-byte Emoji.
    The three byte Emoji will be interpreted as binary and make
    "weird characters" at a guess.

    You *expect* trouble for this project, and you never know whether
    there are big alligators or small alligators, waiting for you to
    stick your foot in. If it was "just baseline UTF-8 text", shit like
    this would not happen. Guess which format I would emit, if
    I was the Export Designer. It wouldn't be the shit-storm above...
    That's just "stoopid on steroids".

    The claim about the Export is, it "loses all formatting". You can see
    from the format

    [DD/MM/YYYY, HH:MM:SS] Sender Name: Message body here

    that they want to lose all formatting. OK, if you lose all formatting,
    why salt the fucking thing with NNBSP, which is an *attempt* to format something ?

    And if you really have to emit the text with SoftBank Emoji,
    why not include the code for a "translator" to convert the
    three byte codes into four byte codes, giving the recipient
    the option of having other mode of representation ? The thread
    I could find, mentions "having to prepare a map" to do that, and
    the idiots who made this mess, should be providing the map, not
    the poor user at the end of the chain.

    So yes, it's text, tainted text. And there are utilities to clean
    it up a bit. Commercial utilities :-/

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Chris@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 16:54:42
    Herbert Kleebauer <klee@unibwm.de> wrote:
    On 7/19/2026 3:46 AM, micky wrote:

    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    I will try to find the problem and get back to you all, but I've looked
    already and I know I'll lose interest soon.

    I think, the problem is not the text file or the program
    you use to print it, but the HW of the printer, the communication
    (what do you use, USB or WLAN) or the printer driver.

    I agree this could be the issue. I have an old canon inkjet and the
    wireless connection is so fragile that if you don't keep the print dialogue
    in the foreground the whole time, it stops printing. Even if the
    screensaver kicks in it kills the print job.

    Seems you can print at least one page, so for a fast
    work around:

    Open the text file in any program where you can specify the
    pages to print (any word processing program or even Firefox).
    Print page one, then in a new print job print page 3, then
    page 5 and so on. Then reinsert the paper to print page 2,4,..
    on the back site.








    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 22:15:50
    On 2026-07-19 03:17, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:50:34 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

    On 2026/7/19 0:55:5, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on 18 Jul 2026 18:21:42 GMT, Frank Slootweg
    <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
    []
    As it *displays* fine in Notepad++, print it in Notepad+++, but use
    "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the 'printer'.

    Oh, this is so easy.

    So you have a PDF that appears to show the same text?

    Yes.

    And printing from the PDF tool works? Using Adobe Reader, perhaps?

    If it doesn't, there is another way. Use a tool to convert all pages of
    the PDF to JPG, then print each JPG separately.

    I can not say what tool to do the conversion to JPG in Windows. I know
    how to do it in Linux. Somebody else would know.


    Looking with a text editor is not that useful. Even if the text is
    ASCII, characters below 20 are trouble, but those above 127 are legit. However, likely the text is Unicode. Not possible to interpret unless
    you are an expert.



    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 22:50:02
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 22:05:22
    On 2026/7/19 21:15:50, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 03:17, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:50:34 +0100, "J. P.
    Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    So you have a PDF that appears to show the same text?

    Yes.

    And printing from the PDF tool works? Using Adobe Reader, perhaps?

    If it doesn't, there is another way. Use a tool to convert all pages of
    the PDF to JPG, then print each JPG separately.

    I can not say what tool to do the conversion to JPG in Windows. I know
    how to do it in Linux. Somebody else would know.

    Well, if all else fails, the PrtScn key (followed by a paste into any
    image editor - I use IrfanView for nearly everything; then a crop of
    edgestuff if necessary) would do, though the quality wouldn't be great
    if it's a long block of text or a low-res screen.

    But micky's got it to work (via his W10 computer).

    Looking with a text editor is not that useful. Even if the text is
    ASCII, characters below 20 are trouble, but those above 127 are legit.

    Despite some people using the term "extended ASCII", ASCII was never
    extended beyond 7F. Though some encodings that go beyond 7F _call_
    themselves ASCII, I think.

    However, likely the text is Unicode. Not possible to interpret unless
    you are an expert.

    Indeed.


    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Advertising is legalized lying. - H.G. Wells

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 22:06:12
    On 2026/7/19 21:50:2, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe
    the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    Does UTF-8 do colour?
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Advertising is legalized lying. - H.G. Wells

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 23:24:09
    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:50:2, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe >>>> the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 23:24:33
    On 2026-07-19 23:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:15:50, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 03:17, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:50:34 +0100, "J. P.
    Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    So you have a PDF that appears to show the same text?

    Yes.

    And printing from the PDF tool works? Using Adobe Reader, perhaps?

    If it doesn't, there is another way. Use a tool to convert all pages of
    the PDF to JPG, then print each JPG separately.

    I can not say what tool to do the conversion to JPG in Windows. I know
    how to do it in Linux. Somebody else would know.

    Well, if all else fails, the PrtScn key (followed by a paste into any
    image editor - I use IrfanView for nearly everything; then a crop of edgestuff if necessary) would do, though the quality wouldn't be great
    if it's a long block of text or a low-res screen.

    Yes, but prtscn would not get the entire page unless zoomed out. Better
    to do a conversion PDF ? PNG, much better quality. I'm sure there are
    programs in Windows to do it. At worst, install something like gimp.


    But micky's got it to work (via his W10 computer).

    Yes, I read it later.


    Looking with a text editor is not that useful. Even if the text is
    ASCII, characters below 20 are trouble, but those above 127 are legit.

    Oops. meant to write HEX editor.


    Despite some people using the term "extended ASCII", ASCII was never
    extended beyond 7F. Though some encodings that go beyond 7F _call_
    themselves ASCII, I think.

    In Spain, we used the entire 8 bit space, ie, 255 chars, except the
    lower part that were control codes. In the IBM-PC world, the upper 127
    chars were used, even in the USA, for things like line drawings and some accented letters. The codepage command changed the map of the upper 127
    chars. In the IBM-PC world, the 8 bit text was always legal.


    However, likely the text is Unicode. Not possible to interpret unless
    you are an expert.

    Indeed.




    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 18:14:11
    On Sun, 7/19/2026 5:24 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 23:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:15:50, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 03:17, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:50:34 +0100, "J. P.
    Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    So you have a PDF that appears to show the same text?

    Yes.

    And printing from the PDF tool works? Using Adobe Reader, perhaps?

    If it doesn't, there is another way. Use a tool to convert all pages of
    the PDF to JPG, then print each JPG separately.

    I can not say what tool to do the conversion to JPG in Windows. I know
    how to do it in Linux. Somebody else would know.

    Well, if all else fails, the PrtScn key (followed by a paste into any
    image editor - I use IrfanView for nearly everything; then a crop of
    edgestuff if necessary) would do, though the quality wouldn't be great
    if it's a long block of text or a low-res screen.

    Yes, but prtscn would not get the entire page unless zoomed out. Better to do a conversion PDF ? PNG, much better quality. I'm sure there are programs in Windows to do it. At worst, install something like gimp.


    But micky's got it to work (via his W10 computer).

    Yes, I read it later.


    Looking with a text editor is not that useful. Even if the text is
    ASCII, characters below 20 are trouble, but those above 127 are legit.

    Oops. meant to write HEX editor.


    Despite some people using the term "extended ASCII", ASCII was never
    extended beyond 7F. Though some encodings that go beyond 7F _call_
    themselves ASCII, I think.

    In Spain, we used the entire 8 bit space, ie, 255 chars, except the lower part that were control codes. In the IBM-PC world, the upper 127 chars were used, even in the USA, for things like line drawings and some accented letters. The codepage command changed the map of the upper 127 chars. In the IBM-PC world, the 8 bit text was always legal.


    However, likely the text is Unicode. Not possible to interpret unless
    you are an expert.

    Indeed.

    I found a sample of a WhatsApp chat, and the "issues" in it, might be
    from a different era than the Chat Micky was working with. The WhatsApp
    sample had proper UTF-8 emojis (the four byte ones), so that wasn't
    broken. And the NNBSP was similarly missing, and something else un-identifiable was there instead. I looked up the UTF-8 code and was told it was
    a punctuation not in evidence. The "behavior" of the file suggested
    it did have NBSP in it. As changing the width of Notepad, changed the layout
    in the "flowed" sense.

    Which means, even if we found a crude utility, and it "seemed to work here",
    it might not work for Micky. That was one reason I wanted to find a sample file,
    to see whether it matched the horrors described.

    Paul



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 01:12:04
    On 2026/7/19 22:24:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 23:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:15:50, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    []
    I can not say what tool to do the conversion to JPG in Windows. I know
    how to do it in Linux. Somebody else would know.

    Well, if all else fails, the PrtScn key (followed by a paste into any
    image editor - I use IrfanView for nearly everything; then a crop of
    edgestuff if necessary) would do, though the quality wouldn't be great
    if it's a long block of text or a low-res screen.

    Yes, but prtscn would not get the entire page unless zoomed out. Better
    to do a conversion PDF ? PNG, much better quality. I'm sure there are programs in Windows to do it. At worst, install something like gimp.

    Oh, I definitely agree. That was just a quick and dirty way of doing it
    if nothing else was available. As you say, you'd have to zoom out to get
    the whole page, which would terrible the quality.

    But micky's got it to work (via his W10 computer).

    Yes, I read it later.


    Looking with a text editor is not that useful. Even if the text is
    ASCII, characters below 20 are trouble, but those above 127 are legit.

    Oops. meant to write HEX editor.

    Ah, I was a bit puzzled!

    Despite some people using the term "extended ASCII", ASCII was never
    extended beyond 7F. Though some encodings that go beyond 7F _call_
    themselves ASCII, I think.

    In Spain, we used the entire 8 bit space, ie, 255 chars, except the
    lower part that were control codes. In the IBM-PC world, the upper 127
    chars were used, even in the USA, for things like line drawings and some accented letters. The codepage command changed the map of the upper 127 chars. In the IBM-PC world, the 8 bit text was always legal.

    Oh yes, the upper 128 byte values have lots of alternative character
    sets - as you say, box drawing ones and the like; and, there's a pretty
    common one that has most of the accented, umlauted, tilded, and so on characters for many European languages (even the ? for my ?koda [car]).
    I've often seen this particular set referred to as "extended ASCII";
    however, strictly ASCII was/is an American standard (American Standard
    Code for Information Interchange), which I read once somewhere was never _officially_ extended beyond 127 (delete).

    However, likely the text is Unicode. Not possible to interpret unless
    you are an expert.

    Indeed.




    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
    wrong. - H.L.Mencken

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 01:16:48
    On 2026/7/19 22:24:9, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????


    You learn something every day!

    I had to zoom in to see what's in your .sig; since they are flags, do I
    assume that UTF-8 is much bigger than 128 or 256 character spaces, as
    flags alone would take up most of that number?
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
    wrong. - H.L.Mencken

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 03:10:30
    On 2026-07-20 00:14, Paul wrote:
    Which means, even if we found a crude utility, and it "seemed to work here", it might not work for Micky. That was one reason I wanted to find a sample file,
    to see whether it matched the horrors described.

    I can produce such files, but most would be private.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 03:16:30
    On 2026-07-20 02:12, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 22:24:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 23:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:15:50, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    []
    I can not say what tool to do the conversion to JPG in Windows. I know >>>> how to do it in Linux. Somebody else would know.

    Well, if all else fails, the PrtScn key (followed by a paste into any
    image editor - I use IrfanView for nearly everything; then a crop of
    edgestuff if necessary) would do, though the quality wouldn't be great
    if it's a long block of text or a low-res screen.

    Yes, but prtscn would not get the entire page unless zoomed out. Better
    to do a conversion PDF ? PNG, much better quality. I'm sure there are
    programs in Windows to do it. At worst, install something like gimp.

    Oh, I definitely agree. That was just a quick and dirty way of doing it
    if nothing else was available. As you say, you'd have to zoom out to get
    the whole page, which would terrible the quality.

    But micky's got it to work (via his W10 computer).

    Yes, I read it later.


    Looking with a text editor is not that useful. Even if the text is
    ASCII, characters below 20 are trouble, but those above 127 are legit.

    Oops. meant to write HEX editor.

    Ah, I was a bit puzzled!

    Sorry! Sometimes the mind orders something but the hand has a different
    mind. And the eyes see what was ordered, not what was actually typed.


    Despite some people using the term "extended ASCII", ASCII was never
    extended beyond 7F. Though some encodings that go beyond 7F _call_
    themselves ASCII, I think.

    In Spain, we used the entire 8 bit space, ie, 255 chars, except the
    lower part that were control codes. In the IBM-PC world, the upper 127
    chars were used, even in the USA, for things like line drawings and some
    accented letters. The codepage command changed the map of the upper 127
    chars. In the IBM-PC world, the 8 bit text was always legal.

    Oh yes, the upper 128 byte values have lots of alternative character
    sets - as you say, box drawing ones and the like; and, there's a pretty common one that has most of the accented, umlauted, tilded, and so on characters for many European languages (even the ? for my ?koda [car]).
    I've often seen this particular set referred to as "extended ASCII";
    however, strictly ASCII was/is an American standard (American Standard
    Code for Information Interchange), which I read once somewhere was never _officially_ extended beyond 127 (delete).

    ASCII wasn't, or perhaps ANSI wasn't. But the charset in the IBM-PC was
    always 8 bit.

    man ascii in Linux says:

    ASCII is the American Standard Code for Information
    Interchange. It is a 7-bit code. Many 8-bit codes
    (e.g., ISO/IEC 8859-1) contain ASCII as their lower half.
    The international counterpart of ASCII is known
    as ISO/IEC 646-IRV.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 03:26:46
    On 2026-07-20 02:16, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 22:24:9, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????


    You learn something every day!

    Someone else generated that strip, in the Thunderbird group here, I just copied it :-)


    I had to zoom in to see what's in your .sig; since they are flags, do I assume that UTF-8 is much bigger than 128 or 256 character spaces, as
    flags alone would take up most of that number?

    utf-8 can be several bytes per character. Letters are just 1 byte, but a special code tells there are more to follow. That's all I know,
    actually, the rest would be in wikipedia :-)

    UTF-8(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual UTF-8(7)

    NAME
    UTF-8 - an ASCII compatible multibyte Unicode encoding

    DESCRIPTION
    The Unicode 3.0 character set occupies a 16-bit code space. The
    most obvious Unicode encoding (known as UCS-2) consists of a se?
    quence of 16-bit words. Such strings can contain?as part of
    many 16-bit characters?bytes such as '\0' or '/', which have a
    special meaning in filenames and other C library function argu?
    ments. In addition, the majority of UNIX tools expect ASCII
    files and can't read 16-bit words as characters without major
    modifications. For these reasons, UCS-2 is not a suitable ex?
    ternal encoding of Unicode in filenames, text files, environment
    variables, and so on. The ISO/IEC 10646 Universal Character Set
    (UCS), a superset of Unicode, occupies an even larger code
    space?31 bits?and the obvious UCS-4 encoding for it (a sequence
    of 32-bit words) has the same problems.

    The UTF-8 encoding of Unicode and UCS does not have these prob?
    lems and is the common way in which Unicode is used on UNIX-
    style operating systems.


    The flags are special, I think they are two chars. They are special
    emojis. Here they explain it:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_indicator_symbol


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 19, 2026 22:57:56
    On Sun, 7/19/2026 8:16 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 22:24:9, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????


    You learn something every day!

    I had to zoom in to see what's in your .sig; since they are flags, do I assume that UTF-8 is much bigger than 128 or 256 character spaces, as
    flags alone would take up most of that number?


    It's "bigger than our imagination", that's how big the planes are :-)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode

    Version 17.0 defines 159,801 characters

    Unicode is ultimately capable of encoding more than 1.1 million characters.

    Unicode encodes 3,790 emoji, with the continued development
    thereof conducted by the Consortium as a part of the standard.

    The Unicode codespace is divided into 17 planes, numbered 0 to 16.
    Plane 0 is the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP), and contains the most commonly
    used characters. All code points in the BMP are accessed as a single code unit
    in UTF-16 encoding and can be encoded in one, two or three bytes in UTF-8.

    Code points in planes 1 through 16 (the supplementary planes) are accessed
    as surrogate pairs in UTF-16 and encoded in four bytes in UTF-8.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Chris@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 07:45:06
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 22:24:9, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????


    You learn something every day!

    I had to zoom in to see what's in your .sig; since they are flags, do I assume that UTF-8 is much bigger than 128 or 256 character spaces, as
    flags alone would take up most of that number?

    Emojis and the like are rendered locally which is why there are small differences across platforms. What is sent is simply a code that is
    understood by all utf-8 compatible systems. An incompatible one will just
    show the bytecode or something similar.


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 07:19:22
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 23:24:09 +0200, "Carlos
    E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:50:2, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe >>>>> the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only, so I don't see smileys,
    flags, or color here. I could use Thunderbird but I trust you are
    telling me the truth. ;-) What shows quoted in this reply is not the
    same as what showed in your post also. Many of the characters are
    different.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 07:19:47
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 03:11:34 +0800, "Mr.
    Man-wai Chang" <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 7/19/2026 1:36 AM, micky wrote:
    I can't get a text file to print completely.
    .....
    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1
    ....
    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,

    You are having problem with the PRINT
    command (via "LPT1"), not about
    printing a big text file.

    You sure that your text file
    is really a plain-text file
    without strange codes and/or
    non-printable cahracters?

    It does have those 3 symbols, the heart, the smiley, and the praying
    hands. Aren't there some non-alphanumeric characters that were in the
    original txt font. At any rate, it's called a text file and notepad++
    displays them in color, and when Libreoffice office printed what was
    called a txt file and pringed almost half of the it, it printed each of
    those sympbols in black outline. (I have color turned off because red
    is clogged, and I can't unclog it.)


    That affects PRINT command.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 07:35:15
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 09:41:28 +0200, Herbert Kleebauer <klee@unibwm.de> wrote:

    On 7/19/2026 3:46 AM, micky wrote:

    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    I will try to find the problem and get back to you all, but I've looked
    already and I know I'll lose interest soon.

    I think, the problem is not the text file or the program
    you use to print it, but the HW of the printer, the communication
    (what do you use, USB or WLAN) or the printer driver.

    I'm using WLAN from both computers. I assumed I was using the same
    printer driver. I installed in each the software that the Brother
    webpage provides for the printer, but maybe Brother provided something different for win10 vs. 11?

    They do make one choose OS, 7 different versions including 11 and 10-32
    or -4 bit. Is it almost guaranteed that they have to be different
    because 10 and 11 are different? Once they have two versions, they
    might update the 11 version and not do so to 10.

    Yes, of course they did, since the NNBSP doesn't show in 11. So maybe
    while trying to make something better in 11, they made something else
    worse.

    Seems you can print at least one page, so for a fast
    work around:

    Open the text file in any program where you can specify the
    pages to print (any word processing program or even Firefox).
    Print page one, then in a new print job print page 3, then
    page 5 and so on. Then reinsert the paper to print page 2,4,..
    on the back site.

    Good suggestion. Glad I didn't need to do it.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 07:44:44
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:35:15 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:


    I'm using WLAN from both computers. I assumed I was using the same
    printer driver. I installed in each the software that the Brother
    webpage provides for the printer, but maybe Brother provided something >different for win10 vs. 11?

    They do make one choose OS, 7 different versions including 11 and 10-32
    or -4 bit. Is it almost guaranteed that they have to be different
    because 10 and 11 are different? Once they have two versions, they
    might update the 11 version and not do so to 10.

    Yes, of course they did, since the NNBSP doesn't show in 11. So maybe
    while trying to make something better in 11, they made something else
    worse.

    Well, the drivers have the same version number and approximate length

    win10 11/28/2012 (1.11) 23.04 MB
    win11 11/28/2012 (1.11) 23.04 MB

    But I didn't download and compare them, and they print NNBSP differently
    so they must be different, right?

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 07:53:09
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 09:27:55 +0100, "J. P.
    Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:


    But this was not the cause of the problem because thisappears for every
    entry, almost every sentence, from the first line until the last.

    No, there was obviously some other control character, that you'd be able
    to see with a hex viewer - if you bother now. (I'd say at least install
    a hex viewer/editor, if you haven't already - it can be useful in the >future.)

    I have one in the prior computer AxD, or HxD or something. In a way I
    wanted to copy over ever piece of software from the prior computer, in
    the same way I copied almost all my data**, but I didn't.

    **Didn't copy some settings that either I'd forgotten I'd made or whose
    stored location I didn't know.

    Here it is, HxD, last version from 2021 and doesn't mention win11, but
    it's the one I've used and I'm sure it's good enough.

    Okay, installed, but the time-consuming part is looking for the problem
    bytes. I'll get back to you.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 08:09:02
    On Mon, 7/20/2026 7:19 AM, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 23:24:09 +0200, "Carlos
    E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:50:2, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe >>>>>> the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ???®???¯???????????????????¦???®???¯???????????????????¦???®???¯???????????????????¦

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES???¦????, EU???¦???§;

    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only, so I don't see smileys,
    flags, or color here. I could use Thunderbird but I trust you are
    telling me the truth. ;-) What shows quoted in this reply is not the
    same as what showed in your post also. Many of the characters are
    different.


    If Forte Agent can save out a USENET message as a .eml file,
    you can open the .eml file in Notepad and the colors and so on
    will show up. While Thunderbird can do it too, you'd have to set up
    Thunderbird to access the message. Whereas Notepad just needs
    the file to work.

    In Carlos signature, looking with a hex editor, are two letters ASCII,
    followed by F0 9F 87 AA and F0 9F 87 B8 , which are individual
    letters, a little smaller in size than the ASCII-like materials to the
    left of them.

    The colored squares are similar in design F0 9F 9F AB and
    use four bytes each, for one colored square.

    Even if the .eml doesn't have a BOM at the very beginning of the
    file (like FF FE), Notepad can still figure out the encoding and
    open it properly.

    If the SoftBank encoding of emoji are present in a file, then
    Notepad cannot parse that and neither can Thunderbird, as the
    three byte codes in question do not follow standards. As a result,
    the individual bytes appear as "weird characters" instead.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 14:25:42
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 23:24:09 +0200, "Carlos
    E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:50:2, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe >>>>>> the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ???®???¯???????????????????¦???®???¯???????????????????¦???®???¯???????????????????¦

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES???¦????, EU???¦???§;

    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)

    so I don't see smileys,
    flags, or color here. I could use Thunderbird but I trust you are
    telling me the truth. ;-) What shows quoted in this reply is not the
    same as what showed in your post also. Many of the characters are
    different.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 14:32:45
    On 2026-07-19 03:46, micky wrote:
    Well, I hope to reply to each of you, but because you are the last
    poster replying directly to me, I will say what's probably the end of
    the story.

    I sent an email to myself with the file attached. Opened it with
    Notepad++ on the upstairs win10 computer, and printed it from there, and
    it printed completely on the first try!!!! 2-sided even, Almost 13
    pages, 7 sheets.

    A victory for win10!!!. I hope you win10 guys appreciate this.

    And a good reazon for me not to have retired my older computer.

    If the email client interpreted the file as "text", it then can do a translation on the text, in effect cleaning out the codes that break
    printing.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 09:27:02
    On Mon, 7/20/2026 8:32 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-19 03:46, micky wrote:
    Well, I hope to reply to each of you, but because you are the last
    poster replying directly to me, I will say what's probably the end of
    the story.

    I sent an email to myself with the file attached. Opened it with
    Notepad++ on the upstairs win10 computer, and printed it from there, and
    it printed completely on the first try!!!!˙ 2-sided even, Almost 13
    pages, 7 sheets.

    A victory for win10!!!.˙ I hope you win10 guys appreciate this.

    And a good reazon for me not to have retired my older computer.

    If the email client interpreted the file as "text", it then can do a translation on the text, in effect cleaning out the codes that break printing.


    It takes the SoftBank emoji and makes "three weird characters" from the
    three byte sequence it sees.

    This is not cleaning as such, just as ForteAgent converting UTF-8 messages
    into "text" by interpreting individual bytes using some other code page,
    is not cleaning. It's spew.

    The reason the older WhatsApp cannot be handled directly, is the Softbank
    emoji encoding is not a standard, so any "standard" interpreter will do
    the wrong thing when it hits them. If an individual byte happens to be
    an End-of-Text, you could cause a parser to die on the spot. And we'd need
    an expert to tell us how or why that is happening. Only the file Micky has,
    has this property. I got a WhatsApp sample, and the sample I got was
    in pretty good shape, so not all their _chat.txt are a mess. The emoji in
    my sample, were four byte ones.

    Only Micky can figure this out, as he has the file.

    These files apparently come from some database, so these are
    database records extracted and "placed in a text file". WhatsApp
    does not know or care, what character sequence is in each sample,
    and it is "up to the user to decide what to do with it". So rather than
    the claim that "they dropped all the formatting", it is rather a
    matter of just taking the content of a database entry, and "shoving"
    it into a text file.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 09:27:23
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:40:34 +0700, JJ <jj4public@gmail.com> wrote:

    On Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:36:48 -0400, micky wrote:
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No
    mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    You'll need to use `net use` to map a network shared printer to a new DOS >device name. Use `net view \\computername` to get the shared printer name on >that <computername>.

    Okay. I will try this soon.

    If I'm not mistaken, a? shared printer which is not mapped via `net use` >won't have a DOS device name.

    Okay.

    You can use `net use` to check whether or not, a shared printer is already >mapped and has an assigned DOS device name.

    Great.

    On further reflection, I remembered more about the last time I printed
    straight to the printer. Now that I'm retired from working, I've taken
    trips and on one I emailed what I wanted printed to a nearby computer or stationary store, and they printed it for not much money.

    But this last time I rented a room for 6 weeks with 2 other guys** (when
    the 3rd guy was away to do his student teaching, prior to graduation)
    and he kindly left behind a big fancy printer. I used that several
    times, even buying him a new ream of paper, but he didn't leave behind a router***, so of course I didn't use wifi. I think, yes, he had a USB
    cable dangling from the printer, and that's how I connected. No extra
    commands needed. Amazing how I forgot that part.

    I feared that with bypassing the driver, the formatting of what I had
    typed would be lost and it would be one long stream of letters, but it
    was just as I'd typed it. I feared that this time. Maybe I'll follow
    your instructions, send a page, and see what it looks like.


    **They were 36 and 38 and I was 75, but I'm very immature so we got
    along fine.

    ***In fact my temporary roommates didn't have home internet service,
    only their phones. A lot of people do everything on their phones -- ugh
    -- and I used my phone as a hotspot for the laptop. Works very well.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 09:30:05
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:51:56 +1000, Daniel70 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:


    They do make one choose OS, 7 different versions including 11 and
    10-32 or -4 bit.

    WHAT?? MS brought out a four bit OS?? WOW!! ;-P Talk about a VERY select >Clientele.

    I think it's for children.

    Is it almost guaranteed that they have to be different because 10 and
    11 are different? Once they have two versions, they might update the
    11 version and not do so to 10.

    I noticed you replied to yourself, micky. I thought THAT might have been
    you correcting you .... but NO! ;-P

    I talk to myself, too!


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 09:36:39
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:25:42 +0200, "Carlos
    E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 23:24:09 +0200, "Carlos
    E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:50:2, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe >>>>>>> the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)

    Wow, I guess so. It's version 5 of Agent, copyright 2008**. I've paid
    for a later version but I asked people about the extra features it had
    and they didn't name any I wanted. Going from version 3 to 5 was iirc irreversible so even though the next step might not be, I didn't try it.
    ** I'd forgotten it was so old. Of course it wasn't so old when I
    started using it.

    so I don't see smileys,
    flags, or color here. I could use Thunderbird but I trust you are
    telling me the truth. ;-) What shows quoted in this reply is not the
    same as what showed in your post also. Many of the characters are
    different.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 10:07:58
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:09:02 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    On Mon, 7/20/2026 7:19 AM, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 23:24:09 +0200, "Carlos
    E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

    On 2026-07-19 23:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/19 21:50:2, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-18 22:48, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    heart, and one praying hands. In colors like red or yellow. And maybe >>>>>>> the first one was 1/15th of the way down.

    Anything like smileys/emoticons, or colour, are not part of text.

    It is UTF-8 text.

    Does UTF-8 do colour?

    Yes, certainly. See my signature below.
    Or this: ?????????????????????

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only, so I don't see smileys,
    flags, or color here. I could use Thunderbird but I trust you are
    telling me the truth. ;-) What shows quoted in this reply is not the
    same as what showed in your post also. Many of the characters are
    different.


    If Forte Agent can save out a USENET message as a .eml file,
    you can open the .eml file in Notepad and the colors and so on
    will show up. While Thunderbird can do it too, you'd have to set up >Thunderbird to access the message. Whereas Notepad just needs
    the file to work.

    In Carlos signature, looking with a hex editor, are two letters ASCII, >followed by F0 9F 87 AA and F0 9F 87 B8 , which are individual
    letters, a little smaller in size than the ASCII-like materials to the
    left of them.

    The colored squares are similar in design F0 9F 9F AB and
    use four bytes each, for one colored square.

    Even if the .eml doesn't have a BOM at the very beginning of the
    file (like FF FE), Notepad can still figure out the encoding and
    open it properly.

    If the SoftBank encoding of emoji are present in a file, then
    Notepad cannot parse that and neither can Thunderbird, as the
    three byte codes in question do not follow standards. As a result,
    the individual bytes appear as "weird characters" instead.

    Paul

    This sounds worth trying, or maybe just updating Agent. I have 5 and
    they are up to 8. I paid for versions up to 6 or maybe 7. Release
    notes for versions 6, 7, 7.1, 7.2 and 8 say nothing about utf or
    unicode, so I was going to ask on the Agent ng, and when first looking
    if the question was asked already, I see tht Ralph Fox has written an
    add-on that should work with any version from 1.6 on (though 7 is
    recommended, which means that 7 doesn't have it, and reading instead of
    just searching the release notes for 8, no mention of anything related.
    How can that be?)

    Ralph Fox posts in more than one ng and he is always so clever, so
    detailed, and so helpful. I wish I could meet him, as well as many of
    you.

    But installing this is a multi-step process, will take me at least an
    hour. Can't do it right now. I plan to let you all know if it works.

    If anyone wants to read or try the instructions.
    From: Ralph Fox <-rf-nz-@-.invalid>
    Newsgroups: alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent
    Subject: [Unicode] How to -- Full Unicode display in Agent's message
    body pane
    Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2020 21:01:05 +1300
    Organization: No; Y2.038Chaos instead!
    Lines: 171
    Message-ID: <k2h01fh7212c9fss2fhq4i5354ner69cki@4ax.com>

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 10:29:37
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:09:26 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    On Sat, 7/18/2026 10:54 PM, Paul wrote:
    On Sat, 7/18/2026 9:46 PM, micky wrote:
    Narrow No-Break Space (Unicode
    character U+202F)

    Freaky stuff. Should be fun doing a "Replace"
    in a text editor.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space

    Maybe eventually the max width of a line was exceeded ?

    I'm looking again, but it was actually the one that printed that was
    longer, 5 characters instead of the one narrow space.

    It does have lines that are 3 lines long, but they seem to wrap without trouble.

    Paul


    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36219878/whatsapp-export-is-there-a-unicode-emoticon-compressing-convention

    Looking into the hexadecimal representation of the emoticons (only):

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... Dump
    ee 81 9a ee 84 8c ee 84 9c ?.??? Softbank encoding <=== WhatsApp

    instead of

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b ... Dump
    f0 9f 92 a9 f0 9f 91 bd f0 9f 92 80 ??? Unicode version

    and that means there could be some turbulence near the
    non-text bits.

    When they say things like this, they're also avoiding
    all the details of what hides in there.

    "WhatsApp uses UTF-8 encoding for `_chat.txt` exports."

    Paul

    Well, you found something on topic, that's for sure.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Brian Gregory@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 15:53:10
    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?!

    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    --
    Brian Gregory (in England).

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 12:55:31
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:53:09 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 09:27:55 +0100, "J. P. >Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:


    But this was not the cause of the problem because thisappears for every
    entry, almost every sentence, from the first line until the last.

    No, there was obviously some other control character, that you'd be able
    to see with a hex viewer - if you bother now. (I'd say at least install
    a hex viewer/editor, if you haven't already - it can be useful in the >>future.)

    I have one in the prior computer AxD, or HxD or something.
    ...

    Okay, installed, but the time-consuming part is looking for the problem >bytes. I'll get back to you.

    Okay, it's installed, but I don't know what to look for. Some 2-letter
    hex numbers are in black and some in grey, but there are loads of them
    in grey so that's not enough to go on. There is a Data Inspector off to
    the right, but I don't know what that is for.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 13:06:34
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 03:16:30 +0200, "Carlos
    E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:


    Looking with a text editor is not that useful. Even if the text is
    ASCII, characters below 20 are trouble, but those above 127 are legit. >>>
    Oops. meant to write HEX editor.

    Ah, I was a bit puzzled!

    Sorry! Sometimes the mind orders something but the hand has a different >mind. And the eyes see what was ordered, not what was actually typed.

    I read that line a few minutes ago and didn't even notice a problem. The sentence made me think about a hex editor that I dl'd and installed a
    couple hours ago.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 13:11:48
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 21:48:24 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:30:22 +0100, Print
    Text <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    On 18/07/2026 18:36, micky wrote:
    So far I've used Notepad++ and Libreoffice. Notepad++

    Have you tried using Microsoft Notepad? Why not? Is it because you think >>it's spying on you?

    No, LOL It's because somehow it always takes too much paper, but I
    tried it just now because you are suggesting I should and it was going
    to print 35 page instead of 17. It's not just a waste of paper. I
    think it's off-putting to anyone including the hearing officer when I
    hand him a stack that thick.

    If you're using Windows 11 and you still have WordPad installed, it's >>another Microsoft product worth trying.

    I installed Wordpad. I knew about these variious programs but I was
    hoping one of you knew in advance one that is known to bulldoze through
    the kind of problem I'm having.

    Windows 10 has both Notepad and WordPad, so try using those instead.

    I'll get back to you.

    Both Windows 10 and 11 allow you to save/print files as PDFs, so try
    doing this to avoid wasting paper and toner unnecessarily.

    To print to a LPT1 printer you need this simple command:

    copy /B yourfile.txt LPT1

    Yes, using copy instead of print. I forgot that it should be copy, an
    actual DOS command. However it says

    The system cannot find the file specified. I made a new copy of the
    file with a simple name that coudl not be misspelled. Could "lpt1" be
    the file that cannot be found? YES!!!! It could be, because when I
    changed to the port name instead of LPT1, it copied it!!!. But... :-(
    when I went to the printer there was nothing there.

    As I noted elsewhere in the thread, this works when connected via a USB
    cable (or printer cable probably) , but it's not enough for WLAN.

    Problem not really solved but evaded. See the end of my reply to
    Knuttle.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 13:22:20
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:27:02 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
    .....

    It takes the SoftBank emoji and makes "three weird characters" from the
    three byte sequence it sees.

    This is not cleaning as such, just as ForteAgent converting UTF-8 messages >into "text" by interpreting individual bytes using some other code page,
    is not cleaning. It's spew.

    The reason the older WhatsApp cannot be handled directly, is the Softbank >emoji encoding is not a standard, so any "standard" interpreter will do
    the wrong thing when it hits them. If an individual byte happens to be
    an End-of-Text, you could cause a parser to die on the spot. And we'd need
    an expert to tell us how or why that is happening. Only the file Micky has, >has this property. I got a WhatsApp sample, and the sample I got was
    in pretty good shape, so not all their _chat.txt are a mess. The emoji in
    my sample, were four byte ones.

    Only Micky can figure this out, as he has the file.

    These files apparently come from some database, so these are
    database records extracted and "placed in a text file". WhatsApp
    does not know or care, what character sequence is in each sample,
    and it is "up to the user to decide what to do with it". So rather than
    the claim that "they dropped all the formatting", it is rather a
    matter of just taking the content of a database entry, and "shoving"
    it into a text file.

    Paul

    Just ftr, I've returned the phone but I did read all these chats,
    including this problem one, in their original form on Whatsapp in the
    phone. They looked okay, I'm 95% sure I didn't see anything unusual,
    just English going back and forth. I admit I don't remember the emojies
    so maybe I forgot other stuff but I dont' think so. So it's something
    that looks good on the phone. My young friend is mad at me for
    reading his chats and for using the information to try to convince him
    he's being scammed (which he is, without a doubt), so I doubt I'll ever
    see them on his phone again.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 18:48:21
    On 2026/7/20 2:16:30, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    []
    man ascii in Linux says:

    ASCII is the American Standard Code for Information
    Interchange. It is a 7-bit code. Many 8-bit codes
    (e.g., ISO/IEC 8859-1) contain ASCII as their lower half.
    The international counterpart of ASCII is known
    as ISO/IEC 646-IRV.


    That gels with what I remembered: that ASCII, the actual standard, only
    goes up to 7F. A lot of things are carelessly referred to as ASCII (or sometimes "extended ASCII"), but strictly, they aren't.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
    -Richard

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 18:51:00
    On 2026/7/20 18:6:34, micky wrote:
    []
    I read that line a few minutes ago and didn't even notice a problem. The sentence made me think about a hex editor that I dl'd and installed a
    couple hours ago.

    (Was it the one I gave you a link to?)

    Since you've got the thing printed anyway (Windows 10 rules!) the
    problem is "solved", but just out of curiosity, have you had a look at
    the problem file with the hex editor, to see what's in it at the problem
    point? I think several of us here would be interested to hear what is there.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
    -Richard

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 17:51:48
    Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    [About Carlos' text with colours example:]

    If Forte Agent can save out a USENET message as a .eml file,
    you can open the .eml file in Notepad and the colors and so on
    will show up. While Thunderbird can do it too, you'd have to set up Thunderbird to access the message. Whereas Notepad just needs
    the file to work.

    I think using Notepad is better, because that is a standard part of
    Windows and Thunderbird isn't. (For example my stone-age version of
    Thunderbird (60.9.0) doesn't display colours, but little boxes with
    diffent patterns of (black-on-white) stripes, dots, etc..)

    BTW, you don't have to set up Thunderbird for this just right-click
    the .eml file -> Open with -> Thunderbird.

    [...]

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 19:05:24
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people
    consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even
    Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants
    probably ought to give in.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
    -Richard

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 19:12:46
    On 2026/7/20 12:44:44, micky wrote:
    []
    Well, the drivers have the same version number and approximate length

    win10 11/28/2012 (1.11) 23.04 MB
    win11 11/28/2012 (1.11) 23.04 MB

    But I didn't download and compare them, and they print NNBSP differently
    so they must be different, right?

    Not necessarily; what you're printing from (i. e. what sends something
    to the printer driver) may be different (even if it has the same name) -
    in fact it's quite likely to be, if say a browser.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
    -Richard

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 14:17:07
    On Mon, 7/20/2026 12:55 PM, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:53:09 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 09:27:55 +0100, "J. P.
    Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:


    But this was not the cause of the problem because thisappears for every >>>> entry, almost every sentence, from the first line until the last.

    No, there was obviously some other control character, that you'd be able >>> to see with a hex viewer - if you bother now. (I'd say at least install
    a hex viewer/editor, if you haven't already - it can be useful in the
    future.)

    I have one in the prior computer AxD, or HxD or something.
    ...

    Okay, installed, but the time-consuming part is looking for the problem
    bytes. I'll get back to you.

    Okay, it's installed, but I don't know what to look for. Some 2-letter
    hex numbers are in black and some in grey, but there are loads of them
    in grey so that's not enough to go on. There is a Data Inspector off to
    the right, but I don't know what that is for.


    Open Notepad, take a line of characters/emoji of interest and paste into the input line box.
    The bottom of the web page will immediately print the double byte codes and their name (indicating their validity). I don't know how it will handle
    invalid things, like the SoftBank emoji, but you can test their handling.

    https://www.fontspace.com/unicode/analyzer

    [Picture] Unicode-Text-Analyzer.gif

    https://imgur.com/a/nwDW5Dg

    https://i.postimg.cc/7YnffVL7/Unicode-Text-Analyzer.gif

    It can handle Unicode registered emoji (these are from the WhatsApp sample file on the web).

    ? U+1F60A SMILING FACE WITH SMILING EYES 39 Common
    ? U+1F619 KISSING FACE WITH SMILING EYES

    But for the trouble-makers, it's going to chop the bytes up and make
    bad guesses on the single characters, just as some of your other tools
    were doing.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 14:23:38
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:05:24 +0100, "J. P.
    Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't
    understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people >consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even >Notepad knows about them (when did that start?),

    It turns out that Notepad in win11 has tabs. I might be better off with
    it than with Notepad++, but I didn't want to change.

    NP++ has all kinds of strange rules. I want to make it work like
    Notepad, like Agent and email programs do -- the indentation especially
    -- and I asked on the NP++ forum and didn't get a good answer. Anyone
    here know?

    we dinosaurs/pedants
    probably ought to give in.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 19:30:32
    On 2026/7/20 14:30:5, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:51:56 +1000, Daniel70 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:


    They do make one choose OS, 7 different versions including 11 and
    10-32 or -4 bit.

    WHAT?? MS brought out a four bit OS?? WOW!! ;-P Talk about a VERY select
    Clientele.

    I think it's for children.

    Is it almost guaranteed that they have to be different because 10 and
    11 are different? Once they have two versions, they might update the
    11 version and not do so to 10.

    I noticed you replied to yourself, micky. I thought THAT might have been
    you correcting you .... but NO! ;-P

    I talk to myself, too!

    I think the original one-chip microprocessor - the Intel 4004 (not to be confused with the CMOS 4000 series device of the same name!) - _was_ a
    4-bit. IIRR, it was in a (then) standard 16-pin DIL package, too.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
    -Richard

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 19:48:26
    On 2026/7/20 12:53:9, micky wrote:
    []
    I have one in the prior computer AxD, or HxD or something. In a way I
    wanted to copy over ever piece of software from the prior computer, in
    the same way I copied almost all my data**, but I didn't.

    You mean just by copying over a folder structure? You haven't really
    been able to do that since about Windows 95; unfortunately, when you
    install software, as well as making its own folder and putting files in
    it, it also scatters other files elsewhere, makes changes to the
    registry, adds to the startup menu, and goodness knows what else; just
    copying like data, you're almost certain to miss something somewhere.
    And the settings it tweaks are probably different for different versions
    of Windows, too.

    If they offer a "portable" version, those _may_ be copyable, but most
    software even if it had a portable option doesn't _use_ that version by default.
    []
    Okay, installed, but the time-consuming part is looking for the problem bytes. I'll get back to you.

    Doesn't HXD show the text representation alongside the hex values? I'd
    look in that for the text just before the problem area, then see what
    follows it.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
    -Richard

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 20:02:42
    On 2026/7/20 15:53:10, Brian Gregory wrote:
    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?!

    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    That probably requires a printer driver. Copy <file> PRN (or something
    like that) will work with any printer that can accept plain text; I was
    under the impression that many modern ones can't (i. e. _have_ to be
    sent what is basically graphics), but maybe I'm wrong.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    The makers may make
    and the users may use,
    but the fixers must fix
    with but minimal clues

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 21:06:22
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't
    understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127,
    we simply can not write Spanish.

    So, it is not ascii (american standard), but it is text.

    And then, there are languages that are not supported by just the 255
    charset, they need other sets. Arabic and Chinese are two examples.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 19:51:06
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127,
    we simply can not write Spanish.

    No, it wasn't, but you're just too 'young' to realize that there was a
    time when there was just ASCII (or even EBCDIC or Baudot code)! :-)

    Face it, computers were mostly a US thing and the US did not need
    local language characters. So any computer in Spain (and other
    countries) had to live with the limitations of US computers and
    peripherals (terminals, printers, etc.).

    See for example how the Germans needed to use 'ue' for u+umlaut, etc..
    I'm sure the Spanish had similar mechanisms at the time.

    Local language characters probably came about the time of 'personal computers', no, not IBM-compatibles, but also earlier ones.

    Happy hunting in Wikipedia to find out when local language characters
    came about. Spoiler: It was not in the 50s.

    So, it is not ascii (american standard), but it is text.

    And then, there are languages that are not supported by just the 255 charset, they need other sets. Arabic and Chinese are two examples.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 22:04:08
    On 2026-07-20 21:51, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >>>> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people
    consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even
    Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants
    probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127,
    we simply can not write Spanish.

    No, it wasn't, but you're just too 'young' to realize that there was a time when there was just ASCII (or even EBCDIC or Baudot code)! :-)

    Face it, computers were mostly a US thing and the US did not need
    local language characters. So any computer in Spain (and other
    countries) had to live with the limitations of US computers and
    peripherals (terminals, printers, etc.).

    To me, actual computing started with the IBM-PC, and this machine always
    used 8 bit text. Whatever happened before is irrelevant.

    And we are talking in a Windows group, so here ASCII is not a thing.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 19:13:41
    On Mon, 7/20/2026 2:30 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 14:30:5, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:51:56 +1000, Daniel70
    <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:


    They do make one choose OS, 7 different versions including 11 and
    10-32 or -4 bit.

    WHAT?? MS brought out a four bit OS?? WOW!! ;-P Talk about a VERY select >>> Clientele.

    I think it's for children.

    Is it almost guaranteed that they have to be different because 10 and
    11 are different? Once they have two versions, they might update the
    11 version and not do so to 10.

    I noticed you replied to yourself, micky. I thought THAT might have been >>> you correcting you .... but NO! ;-P

    I talk to myself, too!

    I think the original one-chip microprocessor - the Intel 4004 (not to be confused with the CMOS 4000 series device of the same name!) - _was_ a
    4-bit. IIRR, it was in a (then) standard 16-pin DIL package, too.


    As inanimate objects, they're pretty to look at on the outside,
    but sometimes the issues on the inside, you won't be sleeping at night :-)

    That's not really a desktop processor. That CPU is from the "calculator era". The fantasy, was doing arithmetic with BCD instructions (0..9 instead of 0..F) one digit at a time. And you can see the evil words "shift registers" appear
    in that article. Yikes! Have we no vacuum tubes or mercury delay lines ?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004

    "The project originated in 1969 when Busicom Corp. commissioned Intel to
    design a family of seven chips for electronic calculators, including a
    three-chip CPU.[4] Busicom initially envisioned using shift registers
    for data storage and ROM for instructions. Intel engineer Marcian Hoff
    proposed a simpler architecture based on data stored on RAM, making a
    single-chip CPU possible."

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 19:20:51
    On Mon, 7/20/2026 2:48 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 12:53:9, micky wrote:
    []
    I have one in the prior computer AxD, or HxD or something. In a way I
    wanted to copy over ever piece of software from the prior computer, in
    the same way I copied almost all my data**, but I didn't.

    You mean just by copying over a folder structure? You haven't really
    been able to do that since about Windows 95; unfortunately, when you
    install software, as well as making its own folder and putting files in
    it, it also scatters other files elsewhere, makes changes to the
    registry, adds to the startup menu, and goodness knows what else; just copying like data, you're almost certain to miss something somewhere.
    And the settings it tweaks are probably different for different versions
    of Windows, too.

    If they offer a "portable" version, those _may_ be copyable, but most software even if it had a portable option doesn't _use_ that version by default.
    []
    Okay, installed, but the time-consuming part is looking for the problem
    bytes. I'll get back to you.

    Doesn't HXD show the text representation alongside the hex values? I'd
    look in that for the text just before the problem area, then see what
    follows it.


    This is my HxD storage location.

    S:\HxD
    HxD64.exe 6,905,856 bytes
    Settings\
    HxD Hex Editor.ini 5,388 bytes
    HxD Hex Editor.lang 3 bytes ("ENU")

    What does that suggest ?

    *******

    If HxD64.exe is elevated, it can do some raw I/O on the disk.
    When run unelevated, you use it on your various "data files".

    If you make changes that affect the file size of a "data file",
    the program keeps the original data file as "data.bin.bak" while
    a new data.bin is created with the edits having taken effect.
    Depending on the file size, there may not be room on the
    volume to do that.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 12:57:28
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 21:51, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >>>> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people >>> consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even >>> Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants
    probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127,
    we simply can not write Spanish.

    No, it wasn't, but you're just too 'young' to realize that there was a time when there was just ASCII (or even EBCDIC or Baudot code)! :-)

    Face it, computers were mostly a US thing and the US did not need
    local language characters. So any computer in Spain (and other
    countries) had to live with the limitations of US computers and
    peripherals (terminals, printers, etc.).

    To me, actual computing started with the IBM-PC, and this machine always used 8 bit text. Whatever happened before is irrelevant.

    And we are talking in a Windows group, so here ASCII is not a thing.

    BUT :-), the IBM-PC used non-(de jure)standard 8-bit character sets
    (and so did/does Windows), these may be Windows groups but you mostly
    use Linux and your (colours) example was UTF-8, so this 'discussion' is
    going in all directions! :-)

    Anyway, my comments were/are mostly in jest. I'm a bit older than you
    and my experience with computers started in the early 70s, when local
    language characters were non-existing.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 11:38:15
    On Tue, 7/21/2026 8:57 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 21:51, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >>>>>> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people >>>>> consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text, >>>>> others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even >>>>> Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants >>>>> probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127, >>>> we simply can not write Spanish.

    No, it wasn't, but you're just too 'young' to realize that there was a >>> time when there was just ASCII (or even EBCDIC or Baudot code)! :-)

    Face it, computers were mostly a US thing and the US did not need
    local language characters. So any computer in Spain (and other
    countries) had to live with the limitations of US computers and
    peripherals (terminals, printers, etc.).

    To me, actual computing started with the IBM-PC, and this machine always
    used 8 bit text. Whatever happened before is irrelevant.

    And we are talking in a Windows group, so here ASCII is not a thing.

    BUT :-), the IBM-PC used non-(de jure)standard 8-bit character sets
    (and so did/does Windows), these may be Windows groups but you mostly
    use Linux and your (colours) example was UTF-8, so this 'discussion' is
    going in all directions! :-)

    Anyway, my comments were/are mostly in jest. I'm a bit older than you
    and my experience with computers started in the early 70s, when local language characters were non-existing.


    For personal computing, at first there wasn't a lot of software,
    so I would not class that as "real computing". We were barely able
    to build up circuits, then hand-assemble enough code to prove
    the thing worked :-) Like the code I wrote for my breadboarded
    computer, all that code did was run the output display (a repurposed
    8 digit calculator display). The display was driven by 75491 and
    75492, you would load <digit number><seven segment value> into the register, wait for a period of time (persistence of vision), then move
    to the next digit and turn it on for the same time period, and the
    display on the LEDs was painted over and over again, giving
    what looked like eight lit digits. There wasn't room on the
    breadboard for the "GPU", so I had to be content with a calculator
    display as my <output> device :-) The GPU was a separate breadboard
    run, a CRT5027 and some SRAM, and I was able to write into the
    frame buffer with DIP switches (turn on individual pixels).

    This is an example of my "hex table" for driving the segments
    as a function of value. I could display 0..F . Eight digits of hex.

    -- -- -- -- -- --
    | | | | | | | | | |
    -- -- -- -- --
    | | | | | | | | | |
    -- -- -- -- --

    -- -- -- --
    | | | | | | | |
    -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
    | | | | | | | | | | | |
    -- -- -- -- -- --

    :-)

    Paul



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 19:47:30
    On 2026-07-21 14:57, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 21:51, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >>>>>> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people >>>>> consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text, >>>>> others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even >>>>> Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants >>>>> probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127, >>>> we simply can not write Spanish.

    No, it wasn't, but you're just too 'young' to realize that there was a >>> time when there was just ASCII (or even EBCDIC or Baudot code)! :-)

    Face it, computers were mostly a US thing and the US did not need
    local language characters. So any computer in Spain (and other
    countries) had to live with the limitations of US computers and
    peripherals (terminals, printers, etc.).

    To me, actual computing started with the IBM-PC, and this machine always
    used 8 bit text. Whatever happened before is irrelevant.

    (before that machine there was around here the ZX-81, the Spectrum, and
    the Amstrad. All 8 bit, I believe, but of their own making :-) )


    And we are talking in a Windows group, so here ASCII is not a thing.

    BUT :-), the IBM-PC used non-(de jure)standard 8-bit character sets
    (and so did/does Windows), these may be Windows groups but you mostly
    use Linux and your (colours) example was UTF-8, so this 'discussion' is
    going in all directions! :-)

    But not alt.folklore.computers, where you find people that reminisce in
    using 7 bit charsets :-p


    Anyway, my comments were/are mostly in jest. I'm a bit older than you
    and my experience with computers started in the early 70s, when local language characters were non-existing.

    Yes, those years I was alive, but not using computers. My father did,
    though, and took me once to the room with the big IBM at his job place.
    I think I read one of his training books.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Chris@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 17:53:55
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't
    understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text.

    It's not really a dispute, ASCII is only complete for English. In any international context it is a poor compromise. That's why utf-8 is the standard.




    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 19:00:09
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-21 14:57, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 21:51, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't
    understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people >>>>> consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text, >>>>> others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even >>>>> Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants >>>>> probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127, >>>> we simply can not write Spanish.

    No, it wasn't, but you're just too 'young' to realize that there was a
    time when there was just ASCII (or even EBCDIC or Baudot code)! :-)

    Face it, computers were mostly a US thing and the US did not need
    local language characters. So any computer in Spain (and other
    countries) had to live with the limitations of US computers and
    peripherals (terminals, printers, etc.).

    To me, actual computing started with the IBM-PC, and this machine always >> used 8 bit text. Whatever happened before is irrelevant.

    (before that machine there was around here the ZX-81, the Spectrum, and
    the Amstrad. All 8 bit, I believe, but of their own making :-) )

    Yes, they were 8-bit *computers*, but did they use *text* with 8-bit
    local language characters, like your Spanish example? Probably not. They probably had some graphic 'characters', line drawing 'characters', etc..

    FWIW, I had a ZX-81 (Times 1000) and MSX and MSX-2 computers.

    And we are talking in a Windows group, so here ASCII is not a thing.

    BUT :-), the IBM-PC used non-(de jure)standard 8-bit character sets
    (and so did/does Windows), these may be Windows groups but you mostly
    use Linux and your (colours) example was UTF-8, so this 'discussion' is going in all directions! :-)

    But not alt.folklore.computers, where you find people that reminisce in using 7 bit charsets :-p

    Well, they aren't Linux groups either, so if you go off-topic, so can
    we (yes we, see Paul's example)! :-)

    FYI, I mostly *do* use 7-bit characters, i.e.ASCII. It suffices for
    most English text and most Dutch text. Dutch only occasionally uses the double-dot above a letter (similar to the German Umlaut), that's in. If
    I have to use that diacritical, I use ISO-8859-1. UTF-8 is way over the
    top for such simple use. Only if I need to use names - of people,
    places, etc. - I might use more local language characters, for example
    for the maintainer of my newsreader! :-)

    Anyway, my comments were/are mostly in jest. I'm a bit older than you and my experience with computers started in the early 70s, when local language characters were non-existing.

    Yes, those years I was alive, but not using computers. My father did, though, and took me once to the room with the big IBM at his job place.
    I think I read one of his training books.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 21:19:24
    On 2026-07-21 21:00, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-21 14:57, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 21:51, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 20:05, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't
    understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people >>>>>>> consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text, >>>>>>> others (like you) still consider it text. Given that, apparently, even >>>>>>> Notepad knows about them (when did that start?), we dinosaurs/pedants >>>>>>> probably ought to give in.

    In my country, text was always 8 bit. Without characters above the 127, >>>>>> we simply can not write Spanish.

    No, it wasn't, but you're just too 'young' to realize that there was a
    time when there was just ASCII (or even EBCDIC or Baudot code)! :-)

    Face it, computers were mostly a US thing and the US did not need >>>>> local language characters. So any computer in Spain (and other
    countries) had to live with the limitations of US computers and
    peripherals (terminals, printers, etc.).

    To me, actual computing started with the IBM-PC, and this machine always >>>> used 8 bit text. Whatever happened before is irrelevant.

    (before that machine there was around here the ZX-81, the Spectrum, and
    the Amstrad. All 8 bit, I believe, but of their own making :-) )

    Yes, they were 8-bit *computers*, but did they use *text* with 8-bit
    local language characters, like your Spanish example? Probably not. They probably had some graphic 'characters', line drawing 'characters', etc..

    Yes, they did. Why would they not, and waste one bit?

    The Spectrum, for instance, used chars above 127 for some graphics
    (boxes) and for some of the tokens of Basic.

    PRINT "HELLO"

    was stored internally as:

    [token for PRINT] [space] "HELLO"


    FWIW, I had a ZX-81 (Times 1000) and MSX and MSX-2 computers.

    And we are talking in a Windows group, so here ASCII is not a thing.

    BUT :-), the IBM-PC used non-(de jure)standard 8-bit character sets
    (and so did/does Windows), these may be Windows groups but you mostly
    use Linux and your (colours) example was UTF-8, so this 'discussion' is
    going in all directions! :-)

    But not alt.folklore.computers, where you find people that reminisce in
    using 7 bit charsets :-p

    Well, they aren't Linux groups either, so if you go off-topic, so can
    we (yes we, see Paul's example)! :-)

    FYI, I mostly *do* use 7-bit characters, i.e.ASCII. It suffices for
    most English text and most Dutch text. Dutch only occasionally uses the double-dot above a letter (similar to the German Umlaut), that's in. If
    I have to use that diacritical, I use ISO-8859-1. UTF-8 is way over the
    top for such simple use. Only if I need to use names - of people,
    places, etc. - I might use more local language characters, for example
    for the maintainer of my newsreader! :-)

    Anyway, my comments were/are mostly in jest. I'm a bit older than you >>> and my experience with computers started in the early 70s, when local
    language characters were non-existing.

    Yes, those years I was alive, but not using computers. My father did,
    though, and took me once to the room with the big IBM at his job place.
    I think I read one of his training books.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 22:51:11
    On 2026/7/21 18:53:55, Chris wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that does
    n't
    understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people

    consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text.

    It's not really a dispute, ASCII is only complete for English. In any

    And only American English at that; it included $ but not , for exam
    ple.
    Back in the day, several devices substituted for $, or sometimes f
    or #
    - sometimes under control of a switch.

    international context it is a poor compromise. That's why utf-8 is the standard.

    _A_ standard.


    "A maze of twisty standards, all alike." (Now that's another link to
    remote mainframes, for me.)
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Don't play "stupid" with me... I'm better at it.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 18:41:48
    On Tue, 7/21/2026 5:51 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/21 18:53:55, Chris wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >>>> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people
    consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text.

    It's not really a dispute, ASCII is only complete for English. In any

    And only American English at that; it included $ but not , for example.
    Back in the day, several devices substituted for $, or sometimes for #
    - sometimes under control of a switch.

    international context it is a poor compromise. That's why utf-8 is the
    standard.

    _A_ standard.


    "A maze of twisty standards, all alike." (Now that's another link to
    remote mainframes, for me.)

    It's a bit bigger than a 7-bit character set. You could keep
    a couch, a sofa, and a hide-a-bed in there, and nobody would
    notice.

    For at least emojis, they may render visually a bit different,
    on each platform. A pooh emoji does not look the same everywhere.

    When it comes to poop, Microsoft has you covered.

    https://www.howtogeek.com/895323/windows-11-is-changing-some-emoji-including-poop/

    Paul



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, July 22, 2026 01:36:57
    On 2026/7/21 23:41:48, Paul wrote:
    []
    When it comes to poop, Microsoft has you covered.
    []
    I think we've known that since well before emojis!
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    31.69 nHz = once a year. (Julian Thomas)

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 22:58:43
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:36:48 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    What I said earlier about most of them printing correctly from win11
    using Notepad++ turned out to be wrong. They all printed, but when I
    went to mark them up for the hearing officer, again I found big chunks
    missing. Emailed them all to the upstairs win10 computer and printed
    them there. This time I did use Notepad, the font was not bigger than
    with other methods (even though it was in win11) and it did not print
    the NNBSPes, just a blank space.

    It's an advantage that short ones are giving this problem too, if I want
    to track down the problem, because there will be much less to examine,
    but I spent hours today reading them all, highlighting in green, and
    orange, and red the parts that make the point that my friend is
    financially incompetent (and ready to give 1000 to a scammer, that
    everyone has explained to him is a scammer, if he only had the money),
    and then copying the highlighting to a copy for the hearing officer and
    s copy for the young man's father. The hearing will probably take 15
    minutes, it may cost me my friendship with the young man, and I'm sick
    of all this. Maybe after a couple days I'll be interested again in
    searching for the cause of the printing problem.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, July 22, 2026 14:16:05
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/21 18:53:55, Chris wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >>> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people
    consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text.

    It's not really a dispute, ASCII is only complete for English. In any

    And only American English at that; it included $ but not ?, for example.
    Back in the day, several devices substituted ? for $, or sometimes for #
    - sometimes under control of a switch.

    To be fair, it doesn't really 'include' the US, nor 'exclude' the UK,
    because there are different dollar currencies and also different pound currencies. So just use the right three-letter currency names, i.e. USD,
    GBP, AUD, EGP, etc. and avoid any ambiguity.

    But yes, ASCII *is* US-centric. Even so centric that it assumes the
    'A' equates to the US! :-)

    international context it is a poor compromise. That's why utf-8 is the standard.

    _A_ standard.

    Exactly!

    "A maze of twisty standards, all alike." (Now that's another link to
    remote mainframes, for me.)

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Sam E@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, July 22, 2026 15:53:56
    On Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:41:48 -0400, Paul wrote:

    [snip]

    When it comes to poop, Microsoft has you covered.

    https://www.howtogeek.com/895323/windows-11-is-changing-some-emoji-
    including-poop/

    Paul

    BTW, in last year's Christmas parade, one of the floats was a truck used
    to clean out septic tanks. There were no holiday decorations on it, but it
    did have the poop emoji twice.

    --
    "God must love stupid people...He made SO many."

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 11:05:17
    On 2026-07-22 16:16, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/21 18:53:55, Chris wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 13:25:42, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-20 13:19, micky wrote:
    []
    FWIW, I use Forte Agent, which is text only,

    My signature is text only. You are using an obsolete client that doesn't >>>>> understand modern text only posts (that use unicode)
    []
    This is one of those disputes that will never be resolved; some people >>>> consider anything containing character outside ASCII not to be text,
    others (like you) still consider it text.

    It's not really a dispute, ASCII is only complete for English. In any

    And only American English at that; it included $ but not , for example.
    Back in the day, several devices substituted for $, or sometimes for #
    - sometimes under control of a switch.

    To be fair, it doesn't really 'include' the US, nor 'exclude' the UK, because there are different dollar currencies and also different pound currencies. So just use the right three-letter currency names, i.e. USD,
    GBP, AUD, EGP, etc. and avoid any ambiguity.

    But yes, ASCII *is* US-centric. Even so centric that it assumes the
    'A' equates to the US! :-)

    international context it is a poor compromise. That's why utf-8 is the
    standard.

    _A_ standard.

    Exactly!

    "A maze of twisty standards, all alike." (Now that's another link to
    remote mainframes, for me.)

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is
    "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they
    write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site
    that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 13:42:58
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is "Do?a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site
    that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    I just tried and they also have problems with 'difficult' Dutch names,
    for example "'s-Hertogenbosch", sometimes the leading apostrophe (') is missing.

    OTOH, is it an apostrophe or a single quote!? :-)

    But don't get me started about buggy websites. I'm only surprised if a website *isn't* buggy. There nearly always is *some* stupid error,
    malfunction, etc., etc..

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 11:07:11
    On Thu, 7/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is
    "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they
    write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site
    that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    I just tried and they also have problems with 'difficult' Dutch names,
    for example "'s-Hertogenbosch", sometimes the leading apostrophe (') is missing.

    OTOH, is it an apostrophe or a single quote!? :-)

    But don't get me started about buggy websites. I'm only surprised if a website *isn't* buggy. There nearly always is *some* stupid error, malfunction, etc., etc..


    An example I could find:

    Which do you use: don/do¤a or se¤or/se¤ora?

    If only we had some sort of automated agent that could
    correct these errors... :-) Naw. Never mind.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From ....winston@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 13:41:23
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is
    "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they
    write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site
    that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk, Connecticut[CT].
    - Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx
    $45000 today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems,
    smartphones, and plenty of other related products.


    --
    ...w­¤?ń?¤

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 19:55:55
    On 2026-07-23 19:41, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is
    "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they
    write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site
    that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    ˙˙ Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk, Connecticut[CT].
    ˙- Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx
    $45000 today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems,
    smartphones, and plenty of other related products.



    If the software was made in the USA, and the index is made in ascii, it
    can not cope with other letters.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Brian Gregory@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 20:02:08
    On 20/07/2026 20:02, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 15:53:10, Brian Gregory wrote:
    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?!

    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    That probably requires a printer driver. Copy <file> PRN (or something
    like that) will work with any printer that can accept plain text; I was
    under the impression that many modern ones can't (i. e. _have_ to be
    sent what is basically graphics), but maybe I'm wrong.

    So micky has a printer that has no Windows driver?

    --
    Brian Gregory (in England).

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Brian Gregory@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 20:04:33
    How is the printer connected to the computer?

    --
    Brian Gregory (in England).

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 20:26:01
    On 2026/7/23 20:2:8, Brian Gregory wrote:
    On 20/07/2026 20:02, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/20 15:53:10, Brian Gregory wrote:
    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?! >>>
    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    That probably requires a printer driver. Copy <file> PRN (or something
    like that) will work with any printer that can accept plain text; I was
    under the impression that many modern ones can't (i. e. _have_ to be
    sent what is basically graphics), but maybe I'm wrong.

    So micky has a printer that has no Windows driver?

    No, but printing - via the driver - wasn't working properly, and just
    copying raw ASCII direct to the printer sometimes used to work (though I
    have my doubts with modern printers which might not know what to do with
    RAW ASCII); it was worth a try.

    But micky's achieved what he wanted using his W10 machine, so clearly
    something about his W11 one - different driver, different Notepad(+n),
    etc. - didn't.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
    - Mahatma Gandhi (according to the film Gandhi [1982])

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 17:47:11
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:53:10 +0100, Brian
    Gregory <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote:

    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?!

    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    As I said in the first post, it didn't print the whole thing that way.
    That's the essence of the problem.

    I don't like the implication that I'm not normal.

    WLAN, with both computers, the one that does not work and the one that
    did.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 21:12:53
    On Thu, 7/23/2026 5:47 PM, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:53:10 +0100, Brian
    Gregory <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote:

    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?!

    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    As I said in the first post, it didn't print the whole thing that way.
    That's the essence of the problem.

    I don't like the implication that I'm not normal.

    We know the answer to this mission, lies in the binary-like
    garbage in that file. Something in there is telling the
    print job to stop.

    https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/questing/man1/uniname.1.html

    uniname Android.txt > Android-out.txt

    And there is a "lines" parameter which defaults to 24, when it comes
    to emitting the header line.

    character byte UTF-32 encoded as glyph name
    110 178 00043F D0 BF ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PE
    111 180 000440 D1 80 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ER
    112 182 00043E D0 BE ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O
    113 184 000447 D1 87 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CHE
    114 186 000438 D0 B8 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I
    115 188 000442 D1 82 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TE
    116 190 000430 D0 B0 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A
    117 192 000442 D1 82 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TE
    118 194 00044C D1 8C ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT SIGN
    119 196 000020 20 SPACE
    120 197 000432 D0 B2 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER VE
    121 199 000430 D0 B0 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A
    122 201 000448 D1 88 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHA
    123 203 000438 D0 B8 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I
    124 205 000020 20 SPACE
    125 206 000441 D1 81 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ES
    126 208 00043E D0 BE ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O
    127 210 00043E D0 BE ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O
    128 212 000431 D0 B1 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BE
    129 214 000449 D1 89 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHCHA
    130 216 000435 D0 B5 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE
    131 218 00043D D0 BD ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EN character byte UTF-32 encoded as glyph name
    132 220 000438 D0 B8 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I
    133 222 00044F D1 8F ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA

    This is likely to fail when it hits the SoftBank Emoji three byte sequences. You would have to replace the three byte sequence, with the proper quad.

    The second column is the decimal byte-offset in the source file. If uniname exited
    at a place it did not like, the last line in the output file would tell you where your HxD could profitably be applied (byte-offset). I would tell you to write a
    little code to do this, but the audience would scowl if I said that
    (and rightly so). But you have the file and we don't, so it's not
    like we could offer code "guaranteed to work". As writing anything to
    process files like that, is hard. It would be an iterative process.

    *******

    You might ask "how can I do this, exactly". Good question.

    In a WSL2 bash window:

    sudo apt install uniutils

    cd /mnt/s # The location of the Android.txt sample file
    # This is my Windows S: partition.
    # The file is a WhatsApp of a Russian-speaking session.

    uniname Android.txt >Android-out.txt

    You could also install a Linux Distro in a virtual machine.
    As a substitute for a WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2) virtual machine.

    I always have access to two ecosystems on a computer, as part of
    problem solving.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From ....winston@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 01:10:41
    On 07/23/2026 1:55 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-23 19:41, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is >>>> "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they >>>> write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site >>>> that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    ˙˙ Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk,
    Connecticut[CT].
    ˙˙- Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx
    $45000 today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems,
    smartphones, and plenty of other related products.



    If the software was made in the USA, and the index is made in ascii, it
    can not cope with other letters.

    With respect to Spanish word spellings.

    A few years ago, I attended a 2-day cooking class at a local church. The
    class was a part of a fundraiser. The class was on making an Oaxaxcan
    Mole and taught by a 70 yr old woman. Do¤a Brisa. The recipe was
    available as a txt file on Google Docs.
    Downloaded, saved it as *.txt and printed. The spacing, line break, and alignment on the output for a variety of lines and words(some containing
    a Virguilla and acento agudo) was varied contrary to the display in
    Notepad. Pasting text in to Word, saving as PDF then printing provided a uniform and expected output. No effort taken to look for other possible suspect characters that may have caused print issues.

    The Mole had 34 total ingredients, overnight soak in refrigerator before
    next day finishing.



    --
    ...w­¤?ń?¤

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 10:25:38
    ....winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is
    "Do?a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they
    write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site
    that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk, Connecticut[CT].
    - Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    No, Priceline *acquired* Booking.com in July 2005, Priceline was not
    "the initial company".

    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com#History>

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx
    $45000 today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems,
    smartphones, and plenty of other related products.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 14:21:30
    On 2026-07-24 07:10, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 1:55 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-23 19:41, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The
    place is
    "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead
    they
    write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site >>>>> that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    ˙˙ Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk,
    Connecticut[CT].
    ˙˙- Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx
    $45000 today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems,
    smartphones, and plenty of other related products.



    If the software was made in the USA, and the index is made in ascii,
    it can not cope with other letters.

    With respect to Spanish word spellings.

    A few years ago, I attended a 2-day cooking class at a local church. The class was a part of a fundraiser. The class was on making an Oaxaxcan
    Mole and taught by a 70 yr old woman. Do¤a Brisa.˙ The recipe was
    available as a txt file on Google Docs.
    Downloaded, saved it as *.txt and printed. The spacing, line break, and alignment on the output for a variety of lines and words(some containing
    a Virguilla and acento agudo) was varied contrary to the display in
    Notepad. Pasting text in to Word, saving as PDF then printing provided a uniform and expected output.˙ No effort taken to look for other possible suspect characters that may have caused print issues.

    The Mole had 34 total ingredients, overnight soak in refrigerator before next day finishing.

    So, printing plain texts in Windows is now a problem :-}

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 08:34:57
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:40:34 +0700, JJ <jj4public@gmail.com> wrote:

    On Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:36:48 -0400, micky wrote:
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates
    to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No
    mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    You'll need to use `net use` to map a network shared printer to a new DOS >device name. Use `net view \\computername` to get the shared printer name on >that <computername>.

    If I'm not mistaken, a? shared printer which is not mapped via `net use` >won't have a DOS device name.

    You can use `net use` to check whether or not, a shared printer is already >mapped and has an assigned DOS device name.

    Okay. I'll try that.


    ASI (Artificial Semi-Intelligence said to use
    net use lpt1: \\ComputerName\ShareName /persistent:yes

    I had to hunt for my computername, that I had named it, and that was at
    the top of Settings/System and also in Settings/System/About.

    Then I had to figure out what a sharename was. Google said it was in my
    printer properties under the share tab. Interestingly, the printer has
    both Properties and Printer Properties. The first one didn't have a
    share tab but the second one had one. I changed the printer to sharing
    and named it Brother.

    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    But, alas, nothing came out of the printer! Since iiuc this bypasses
    the queue, there's no point in looking for it there.

    Net use now shows Status OK,
    Local: LPT1
    Remote: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother
    Network: Microsoft Windows Network
    So it looks like it's on the network.

    Any suggestions?

    Despite google's reference to a password, I saw no place to define a
    password, and I wouldn't want one anyhow. None of my neighbors want to
    print on my printer.
    It does suggest that my other (win10) computer might need a
    different driver and offers to install one, but the 3 choices were just
    ARM, x64, and x86 and the other computer is also x64.

    Except for the fact that nothing came out of the printer: Now I think my printer will always be on the network and it will only take copy
    filename lpt1 to print.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 14:40:32
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:40:34 +0700, JJ <jj4public@gmail.com> wrote:

    On Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:36:48 -0400, micky wrote:
    I just tried an elevated cmd window with the command

    print "C:\Data\WhatsApp Chat with +1 (442) nnn-nnnn.txt" lpt1

    and I get "Unable to initialize device PRN" which google says relates >>> to Python. I don't have Python. Do I want it?? Just 4 years ago,
    within win10, I could print a file this way from the cmd box to a
    printer without any of the printer software installed on my computer. No >>> mention of initializing or Python. Maybe Powershell will work better?
    Nope, same error message.

    Is LPT1 the wrong nomenclature? I also tried it with the printer name,
    the port name, and the IP address and got the same error message every
    time.

    You'll need to use `net use` to map a network shared printer to a new DOS
    device name. Use `net view \\computername` to get the shared printer name on >> that <computername>.

    If I'm not mistaken, a˙ shared printer which is not mapped via `net use`
    won't have a DOS device name.

    You can use `net use` to check whether or not, a shared printer is already >> mapped and has an assigned DOS device name.

    Okay. I'll try that.


    ASI (Artificial Semi-Intelligence said to use
    net use lpt1: \\ComputerName\ShareName /persistent:yes

    I had to hunt for my computername, that I had named it, and that was at
    the top of Settings/System and also in Settings/System/About.

    Then I had to figure out what a sharename was. Google said it was in my printer properties under the share tab. Interestingly, the printer has
    both Properties and Printer Properties. The first one didn't have a
    share tab but the second one had one. I changed the printer to sharing
    and named it Brother.

    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in
    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what printer to use.



    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 14:48:09
    On 2026-07-24 03:12, Paul wrote:
    On Thu, 7/23/2026 5:47 PM, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:53:10 +0100, Brian
    Gregory <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote:

    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?! >>>
    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    As I said in the first post, it didn't print the whole thing that way.
    That's the essence of the problem.

    I don't like the implication that I'm not normal.

    We know the answer to this mission, lies in the binary-like
    garbage in that file. Something in there is telling the
    print job to stop.

    https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/questing/man1/uniname.1.html


    This is a strange command I knew nothing about. Interesting.

    uniname Android.txt > Android-out.txt

    And there is a "lines" parameter which defaults to 24, when it comes
    to emitting the header line.

    character byte UTF-32 encoded as glyph name
    110 178 00043F D0 BF ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PE
    111 180 000440 D1 80 ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ER
    112 182 00043E D0 BE ? CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O

    Does it print the line just once, or once for each time the character
    appears on the file?

    I'll write a note to myself about this program. [...] Done.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From ....winston@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 09:23:12
    On 07/24/2026 6:25 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    ....winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is >>>> "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they >>>> write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site >>>> that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk,
    Connecticut[CT].
    - Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    No, Priceline *acquired* Booking.com in July 2005, Priceline was not
    "the initial company".

    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com#History>
    https://www.bookingholdings.com/about/history/


    Booking Holdings
    Formerly:
    Priceline.com Incorporated (1998?2014)
    The Priceline Group Inc. (2014?2018)


    History

    In 1996, Jay S. Walker founded the company in Stamford, Connecticut,
    which launched Priceline.com(1997), an online travel site, that used a
    Name Your Own Price bidding model.[4]

    In March 1999, the company became a public company via an initial public offering, making Walker, who owned a 35% stake in the company, a multi-billionaire.[5][4]

    In July 2005, the company acquired Booking.com for $133 million and was
    merged with ActiveHotels.com, a European online hotel reservation
    company, purchased by Priceline Group for $161 million in September 2004.[8]

    In April 2014, the name of the company was changed from priceline.com. Incorporated to The Priceline Group Inc.[2]

    In February 2018, the company changed its name to Booking Holdings

    --
    ...w­¤?ń?¤

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From ....winston@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 09:32:26
    On 07/24/2026 8:21 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 07:10, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 1:55 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-23 19:41, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The
    place is
    "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead >>>>>> they
    write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a >>>>>> site
    that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly >>>>>> written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    ˙˙ Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk,
    Connecticut[CT].
    ˙˙- Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx
    $45000 today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems,
    smartphones, and plenty of other related products.



    If the software was made in the USA, and the index is made in ascii,
    it can not cope with other letters.

    With respect to Spanish word spellings.

    A few years ago, I attended a 2-day cooking class at a local church.
    The class was a part of a fundraiser. The class was on making an
    Oaxaxcan Mole and taught by a 70 yr old woman. Do¤a Brisa.˙ The recipe
    was available as a txt file on Google Docs.
    Downloaded, saved it as *.txt and printed. The spacing, line break,
    and alignment on the output for a variety of lines and words(some
    containing a Virguilla and acento agudo) was varied contrary to the
    display in Notepad. Pasting text in to Word, saving as PDF then
    printing provided a uniform and expected output.˙ No effort taken to
    look for other possible suspect characters that may have caused print
    issues.

    The Mole had 34 total ingredients, overnight soak in refrigerator
    before next day finishing.

    So, printing plain texts in Windows is now a problem :-}


    :) It was never Windows. Only what(the file that) was given to Windows.
    In the case of the Mole recipe - the file and/or Google Docs.

    --
    ...w­¤?ń?¤

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 13:47:02
    winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 07/24/2026 6:25 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    ....winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is >>>> "Do?a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they >>>> write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site >>>> that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly
    written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk,
    Connecticut[CT].
    - Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    No, Priceline *acquired* Booking.com in July 2005, Priceline was not "the initial company".

    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com#History>
    https://www.bookingholdings.com/about/history/

    So?

    Booking Holdings
    Formerly:
    Priceline.com Incorporated (1998?2014)
    The Priceline Group Inc. (2014?2018)


    History

    In 1996, Jay S. Walker founded the company in Stamford, Connecticut,
    which launched Priceline.com(1997), an online travel site, that used a
    Name Your Own Price bidding model.[4]

    In March 1999, the company became a public company via an initial public offering, making Walker, who owned a 35% stake in the company, a multi-billionaire.[5][4]

    In July 2005, the company acquired Booking.com for $133 million and was merged with ActiveHotels.com, a European online hotel reservation
    company, purchased by Priceline Group for $161 million in September 2004.[8]

    This says exactly what I said (and what my Wikipedia reference says): Priceline *acquired* Booking.com in July 2005, Priceline was *not*
    "the initial company".

    "the initial company" was Booking.com, which was formed in 2000, i.e. *before* Priceline acquired it. (And Booking.com was a merger of the
    earlier companies (Bookings.nl, Bookings Online and Bookings.org).)

    In April 2014, the name of the company was changed from priceline.com. Incorporated to The Priceline Group Inc.[2]

    In February 2018, the company changed its name to Booking Holdings

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 10:09:20
    On Fri, 7/24/2026 8:21 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 07:10, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 1:55 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-23 19:41, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is >>>>>> "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they >>>>>> write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site >>>>>> that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly >>>>>> written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    ˙˙ Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)

    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk, Connecticut[CT].
    ˙˙- Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers, renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx $45000 >>>> today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems, smartphones, and plenty
    of other related products.

    If the software was made in the USA, and the index is made in ascii, it can not cope with other letters.

    With respect to Spanish word spellings.

    A few years ago, I attended a 2-day cooking class at a local church. The class
    was a part of a fundraiser. The class was on making an Oaxaxcan Mole and taught by
    a 70 yr old woman. Do¤a Brisa.˙ The recipe was available as a txt file on Google Docs.
    Downloaded, saved it as *.txt and printed. The spacing, line break, and alignment
    on the output for a variety of lines and words(some containing a Virguilla and
    acento agudo) was varied contrary to the display in Notepad. Pasting text in to
    Word, saving as PDF then printing provided a uniform and expected output.˙ No effort
    taken to look for other possible suspect characters that may have caused print issues.

    The Mole had 34 total ingredients, overnight soak in refrigerator before next day finishing.

    So, printing plain texts in Windows is now a problem :-}

    There might be a difference in the line spacing, between the various tools.

    I notice in Thunderbird for example, if I paste the unicode output from an LLM-AI, the line spacing is not uniform. If a line has an em-dash and I change that to a hyphen, the line height might change. By removing various "things"
    in the LLM-AI paste, I can return pretty well all the lines to the same
    line height.

    If you made the line spacing wide enough, to accommodate all superscript and subscript possibilities, then people would complain the "line spacing is too wide".
    There would be whining. So you can't win really.

    Only a typographer could tell us what was going on, and how to fix it. People cutting type in a newspaper environment, would not put up with this, but computers
    make all this stuff too easy to do (vary the line spacing in the hopes
    that the tops of special characters in a bottom row, do not "collide" with the descenders of the row above).

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Mr. Man-wai Chang@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 01:18:59
    On 7/24/2026 8:21 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

    So, printing plain texts in Windows is now a problem :-}


    Not following all the posts here:

    The complaint was about Windows Command Prompt,
    not Windows native apps like Notepad or any
    PDF Reader including Firefox & Edge?

    --

    @~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
    / v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
    /( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
    ^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
    The game is afoot... Meow...

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 14:35:05
    On Fri, 7/24/2026 8:48 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 03:12, Paul wrote:
    On Thu, 7/23/2026 5:47 PM, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:53:10 +0100, Brian
    Gregory <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote:

    You're trying to print from the command line without using any software?! >>>>
    Just print it from inside Notepad++ like any normal person would.

    As I said in the first post, it didn't print the whole thing that way.
    That's the essence of the problem.

    I don't like the implication that I'm not normal.

    We know the answer to this mission, lies in the binary-like
    garbage in that file. Something in there is telling the
    print job to stop.

    ˙˙˙ https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/questing/man1/uniname.1.html


    This is a strange command I knew nothing about. Interesting.

    ˙˙˙ uniname Android.txt > Android-out.txt

    And there is a "lines" parameter which defaults to 24, when it comes
    to emitting the header line.

    character˙ byte˙˙˙˙˙˙ UTF-32˙˙ encoded as˙˙˙˙ glyph˙˙ name
    ˙˙˙˙˙˙ 110˙˙˙˙˙˙˙ 178˙ 00043F˙˙ D0 BF˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙ ?˙˙˙˙˙ CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PE
    ˙˙˙˙˙˙ 111˙˙˙˙˙˙˙ 180˙ 000440˙˙ D1 80˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙ ?˙˙˙˙˙ CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ER
    ˙˙˙˙˙˙ 112˙˙˙˙˙˙˙ 182˙ 00043E˙˙ D0 BE˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙˙ ?˙˙˙˙˙ CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O

    Does it print the line just once, or once for each time the character appears on the file?

    I'll write a note to myself about this program. [...] Done.


    I ran into this purely by accident. I didn't know or even suspect this existed!

    See, when you ask explicitly for something like this, the Google AI gives
    you crickets. You search for something on a oblique trajectory,
    and there it is.

    It prints one line per interpreted-character. Since a registered emoji
    could be four bytes, it can gulp up to four bytes per line. But on
    average, it's two bytes per line for each character.

    My sample didn't have three-byte Softbank emoji, and the WhatsApp I downloaded (as a sample file), it only had the four-byte official emoji. And WhatsApp does not "re-encode" messages. Whatever was used in that message epoch, the
    coding is kept. Hand editing (either remove the three byte sequences, or replace with the four byte official replacement), will eventually allow
    that program to finish the run.

    Paul


    Paul


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 20:06:35
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)


    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    I hope you dream a pig.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 15:17:22
    On Fri, 7/24/2026 3:06 PM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what
    printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)



    On the destination computer, your print would be shoved out
    the missing LPT interface. Before Oxford Semiconductor was bought
    and crushed, you would buy a card with one of their chips, to
    have LPT on PCI Express.

    It's quite possible the software is there, but the
    hardware is unlikely to be connected that way. If you
    had a dot matrix line paper printer connected to the
    remote printer port, then that might well work.

    It's not like there aren't other candidate interfaces,
    but they don't work at a byte stream level and likely
    have a more fancy protocol. IPP is one of them apparently.
    You wouldn't be using a "copy" command to drive the process.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 21:49:07
    On 2026-07-24 16:09, Paul wrote:
    On Fri, 7/24/2026 8:21 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 07:10, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 1:55 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-23 19:41, ....winston wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is >>>>>>> "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they >>>>>>> write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site >>>>>>> that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly >>>>>>> written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    ˙˙ Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-) >>>>>>
    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk, Connecticut[CT].
    ˙˙- Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers, renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    Side Note: a $1000 investment in Priceline in 1999 is worth approx $45000 >>>>> today - enough for sufficient pcs, operating systems, smartphones, and plenty
    of other related products.

    If the software was made in the USA, and the index is made in ascii, it can not cope with other letters.

    With respect to Spanish word spellings.

    A few years ago, I attended a 2-day cooking class at a local church. The class
    was a part of a fundraiser. The class was on making an Oaxaxcan Mole and taught by
    a 70 yr old woman. Do¤a Brisa.˙ The recipe was available as a txt file on Google Docs.
    Downloaded, saved it as *.txt and printed. The spacing, line break, and alignment
    on the output for a variety of lines and words(some containing a Virguilla and
    acento agudo) was varied contrary to the display in Notepad. Pasting text in to
    Word, saving as PDF then printing provided a uniform and expected output.˙ No effort
    taken to look for other possible suspect characters that may have caused print issues.

    The Mole had 34 total ingredients, overnight soak in refrigerator before next day finishing.

    So, printing plain texts in Windows is now a problem :-}

    There might be a difference in the line spacing, between the various tools.

    I notice in Thunderbird for example, if I paste the unicode output from an LLM-AI, the line spacing is not uniform. If a line has an em-dash and I change
    that to a hyphen, the line height might change. By removing various "things" in the LLM-AI paste, I can return pretty well all the lines to the same
    line height.

    If you made the line spacing wide enough, to accommodate all superscript and subscript possibilities, then people would complain the "line spacing is too wide".
    There would be whining. So you can't win really.

    Only a typographer could tell us what was going on, and how to fix it. People cutting type in a newspaper environment, would not put up with this, but computers
    make all this stuff too easy to do (vary the line spacing in the hopes
    that the tops of special characters in a bottom row, do not "collide" with the
    descenders of the row above).

    I haven't noticed anything. Mostly I paste from ChatGPT into Thunderbird
    html composer (in Linux).

    I have not noticed issues with the long dash. '?-' But here I'm using
    fixed width and no html.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 21:57:56
    On 2026-07-24 19:18, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
    On 7/24/2026 8:21 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

    So, printing plain texts in Windows is now a problem :-}


    Not following all the posts here:

    The complaint was about Windows Command Prompt,
    not Windows native apps like Notepad or any
    PDF Reader including Firefox & Edge?


    The OP was using Notepad++ and Libreoffice, trying to print a text file produced by WhatsApp, a dump of a chat. Print stopped after printing 2
    pages of the 15 total, so maybe it was obeying an EOF somewhere.

    Hi finally got the job done by emailing the file to another computer
    which succeeded to print.


    The problem described by ....winston that I replied to, and to which you replied, is different, but you deleted that text:

    With respect to Spanish word spellings.

    A few years ago, I attended a 2-day cooking class at a local church.
    The class was a part of a fundraiser. The class was on making an
    Oaxaxcan Mole and taught by a 70 yr old woman. Do¤a Brisa. The recipe
    was available as a txt file on Google Docs.
    Downloaded, saved it as *.txt and printed. The spacing, line break,
    and alignment on the output for a variety of lines and words(some
    containing a Virguilla and acento agudo) was varied contrary to the
    display in Notepad. Pasting text in to Word, saving as PDF then printing provided a uniform and expected output. No effort taken to look for
    other possible suspect characters that may have caused print issues.

    The Mole had 34 total ingredients, overnight soak in refrigerator
    before next day finishing.



    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 22:01:58
    On 2026-07-24 21:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Because "copy file printer" can not handle complex situations like
    Unicode or rich text.

    And if there is an EOF character, it stops printing.


    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what
    printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)




    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 22:09:23
    On 2026/7/24 21:1:58, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 21:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Because "copy file printer" can not handle complex situations like
    Unicode or rich text.

    And if there is an EOF character, it stops printing.

    I forgot the /B switch that someone mentioned earlier in the thread.
    Without it, COPY is indeed a text command (old definition of text -
    probably 7-bit, ASCII!), and indeed the EOF character would end it. With
    the /B (binary) switch, I think COPY uses the file size to know when to
    stop.

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what
    printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)




    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    I used to dream of the day when linux was as stable as windows. Never
    did I imagine that parity would be achieved by windows declining into
    the chaos that engulfs and stifles linux.
    - mike <ham789@netzero.net> in alt.windows7.general, 2018-4-1

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 23:09:53
    On 2026-07-24 22:01, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 21:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    ˙˙˙˙ net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    ˙˙˙˙ copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Because "copy file printer" can not handle complex situations like
    Unicode or rich text.

    And if there is an EOF character, it stops printing.

    Oh, I forgot that as the copy operation bypasses the driver, current
    printers might not be capable of directly printing plain text. Maybe
    they only do the first 255 chars. Somehow selecting a fixed codepage.
    Very probably they don't handle unicode.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 23:15:25
    On 2026-07-24 23:09, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 21:1:58, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 21:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Because "copy file printer" can not handle complex situations like
    Unicode or rich text.

    And if there is an EOF character, it stops printing.

    I forgot the /B switch that someone mentioned earlier in the thread.
    Without it, COPY is indeed a text command (old definition of text -
    probably 7-bit, ASCII!), and indeed the EOF character would end it. With
    the /B (binary) switch, I think COPY uses the file size to know when to
    stop.

    8 bit.

    I remember pin printers handling the 8 bits, and having a bank of
    switches to select the codepage, ie, what to print for chars above 127.
    And this was in the 80's.

    Older printers designed for non IBM-PCs might have been 7 bits.



    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 19:56:10
    On Fri, 7/24/2026 5:15 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 23:09, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 21:1:58, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 21:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in >>>>
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Because "copy file printer" can not handle complex situations like
    Unicode or rich text.

    And if there is an EOF character, it stops printing.

    I forgot the /B switch that someone mentioned earlier in the thread.
    Without it, COPY is indeed a text command (old definition of text -
    probably 7-bit, ASCII!), and indeed the EOF character would end it. With
    the /B (binary) switch, I think COPY uses the file size to know when to
    stop.

    8 bit.

    I remember pin printers handling the 8 bits, and having a bank of switches to select the codepage, ie, what to print for chars above 127. And this was in the 80's.

    Older printers designed for non IBM-PCs might have been 7 bits.

    Common printers aren't reviewed in any useful way anymore,
    so who knows what protocols or parsing opportunities, work.

    I found a thread, where someone was claiming the copy to remote LPR1
    trick, "drove" a printer that was USB connected on a remote machine.

    There have also been claims in the past, that some printers
    can print a PDF sent to them, and the printer has a PDF parser
    inside. But that is not likely to be a $100 inkjet. Previously,
    a party trick was handling PostScript and LPR, for the PostScript
    printers. Some of those printers had a 25MHz processor inside (RISC).

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From ....winston@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 23:51:07
    On 07/24/2026 1:18 PM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
    On 7/24/2026 8:21 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

    So, printing plain texts in Windows is now a problem :-}


    Not following all the posts here:

    The complaint was about Windows Command Prompt,
    not Windows native apps like Notepad or any
    PDF Reader including Firefox & Edge?


    Different variables and comments in reference to language and special letters with symbols were introduced in the thread and addressed
    accordingly. Your response was to that discussion, but unfortunately by deleting that text(snipping) you removed the pertinent reference(Re:
    Notepad, PDF).

    Please try to follow along.



    --
    ...w­¤?ń?¤

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From ....winston@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 00:05:14
    On 07/24/2026 9:47 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 07/24/2026 6:25 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    ....winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 07/23/2026 9:42 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    [...]

    Just minutes ago, I was looking at a place in Booking.com. The place is >>>>>> "Do¤a something". Well, they are unable to write that, and instead they >>>>>> write "Dona something". Do you know how ridiculous that is, for a site >>>>>> that does big business in Spain? The pages are otherwise correctly >>>>>> written in Spanish, using accents and other special letters.

    Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-) >>>>>
    Yes, Booking.com is a Dutch company located in Amsterdam *and* a
    subsidiary of an American company - Booking Holdings in Norwalk,
    Connecticut[CT].
    - Note: the initial company(1999), before acquisitons, mergers,
    renaming was Priceline.com(founded in Stamford, CT)

    No, Priceline *acquired* Booking.com in July 2005, Priceline was not >>> "the initial company".

    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com#History>
    https://www.bookingholdings.com/about/history/

    So?

    Booking Holdings
    Formerly:
    Priceline.com Incorporated (1998?2014)
    The Priceline Group Inc. (2014?2018)


    History

    In 1996, Jay S. Walker founded the company in Stamford, Connecticut,
    which launched Priceline.com(1997), an online travel site, that used a
    Name Your Own Price bidding model.[4]

    In March 1999, the company became a public company via an initial public
    offering, making Walker, who owned a 35% stake in the company, a
    multi-billionaire.[5][4]

    In July 2005, the company acquired Booking.com for $133 million and was
    merged with ActiveHotels.com, a European online hotel reservation
    company, purchased by Priceline Group for $161 million in September 2004.[8]

    This says exactly what I said (and what my Wikipedia reference says): Priceline *acquired* Booking.com in July 2005, Priceline was *not*
    "the initial company".

    "the initial company" was Booking.com, which was formed in 2000, i.e. *before* Priceline acquired it. (And Booking.com was a merger of the
    earlier companies (Bookings.nl, Bookings Online and Bookings.org).)

    In April 2014, the name of the company was changed from priceline.com.
    Incorporated to The Priceline Group Inc.[2]

    In February 2018, the company changed its name to Booking Holdings

    Sequence of events:
    Priceline was the original company.
    Priceline.com was the initial service
    Priceline went public and incorporated
    Priceline acquired Booking.com
    Priceline renamed and incorporated as Priceline Group Inc.
    Priceline Group renamed as Booking Holdings.

    Booking Holdings current and parent company is and remains Priceline regardless of Booking.com history before being acquired.



    --
    ...w­¤?ń?¤

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 01:01:48
    On Tue, 7/21/2026 10:58 PM, micky wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:36:48 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    What I said earlier about most of them printing correctly from win11
    using Notepad++ turned out to be wrong. They all printed, but when I
    went to mark them up for the hearing officer, again I found big chunks missing. Emailed them all to the upstairs win10 computer and printed
    them there. This time I did use Notepad, the font was not bigger than
    with other methods (even though it was in win11) and it did not print
    the NNBSPes, just a blank space.

    It's an advantage that short ones are giving this problem too, if I want
    to track down the problem, because there will be much less to examine,
    but I spent hours today reading them all, highlighting in green, and
    orange, and red the parts that make the point that my friend is
    financially incompetent (and ready to give 1000 to a scammer, that
    everyone has explained to him is a scammer, if he only had the money),
    and then copying the highlighting to a copy for the hearing officer and
    s copy for the young man's father. The hearing will probably take 15 minutes, it may cost me my friendship with the young man, and I'm sick
    of all this. Maybe after a couple days I'll be interested again in
    searching for the cause of the printing problem.


    There's a diagram of the print architecture here.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-prsod/727b1901-dc2e-4d46-8ec4-cf233dcc22a9

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-prsod/ms-prsod_files/image009.png

    What's amusing about the diagram, is your use case is right on the diagram :-)

    SMB: Retrieve
    printer drivers,
    copy /b printing <=== As J.P. was pointing out, you need the binary /b argument (unadulterated-copy-option)
    RAP: Net print
    command support

    It is unresolved for me, exactly what code page or character set, works over that interface.
    Just about anything could happen (and preferably with no Softbank Emoji in there, that
    should be repaired first before transmission attempt). Notice also, that the remote
    printer doesn't have to be on the LPT1: interface -- and I found a Redditor who described this working with a USB printer on the remote computer.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 10:11:45
    winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    [...]
    Sequence of events:
    Priceline was the original company.
    Priceline.com was the initial service
    Priceline went public and incorporated
    Priceline acquired Booking.com
    Priceline renamed and incorporated as Priceline Group Inc.
    Priceline Group renamed as Booking Holdings.

    Booking Holdings current and parent company is and remains Priceline regardless of Booking.com history before being acquired.

    We're clearly on different pages. I was talking about the history of Booking.com, which should be clear from my very first comment:

    "Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)"

    EOD. Better luck next time.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 10:26:46
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 12:57:25
    On 2026-07-25 00:15, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    I haven't noticed anything. Mostly I paste from ChatGPT into Thunderbird
    html composer (in Linux).

    I have not noticed issues with the long dash. '­X-' But here I'm using
    fixed width and no html.

    I notice the problem, in spades, that Paul speaks about, only not in TB.

    I combine "stuff" from lots of sources, and unicode crap abounds in them. Those non-breaking hyphens show up as tofu, for example, and that
    festugenah em dash is a pita because sites use it instead of a comma.

    My solution is to run all my copypasta thru a normalizer which makes all
    the inconsistent text consistent, before I edit the results for posting.

    Your problem is of your own creation: you use software that doesn't
    handle unicode.

    I don't have any problem copy pasting stuff from anywhere.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 13:05:42
    On 2026-07-25 01:56, Paul wrote:
    On Fri, 7/24/2026 5:15 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 23:09, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 21:1:58, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 21:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in >>>>>
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now >>>>> complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Because "copy file printer" can not handle complex situations like
    Unicode or rich text.

    And if there is an EOF character, it stops printing.

    I forgot the /B switch that someone mentioned earlier in the thread.
    Without it, COPY is indeed a text command (old definition of text -
    probably 7-bit, ASCII!), and indeed the EOF character would end it. With >>> the /B (binary) switch, I think COPY uses the file size to know when to
    stop.

    8 bit.

    I remember pin printers handling the 8 bits, and having a bank of switches to select the codepage, ie, what to print for chars above 127. And this was in the 80's.

    Older printers designed for non IBM-PCs might have been 7 bits.

    Common printers aren't reviewed in any useful way anymore,
    so who knows what protocols or parsing opportunities, work.

    I found a thread, where someone was claiming the copy to remote LPR1
    trick, "drove" a printer that was USB connected on a remote machine.

    There have also been claims in the past, that some printers
    can print a PDF sent to them, and the printer has a PDF parser
    inside. But that is not likely to be a $100 inkjet. Previously,
    a party trick was handling PostScript and LPR, for the PostScript
    printers. Some of those printers had a 25MHz processor inside (RISC).

    Yes, my printer can handle postscript sent directly to it. Raw copy as
    is. Tried in Linux, probably works also in Windows. I think it also
    copes with plain text, but not unicode; however, I don't remember if I actually tested this and what was the result, that would be over 10
    years ago.

    Modern printers of the kind can handle PDF directly. I do not know if
    this is instead of PS.

    It is an HP laserjet printer.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 15:27:19
    On 2026/7/25 11:26:46, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Is your "Exactly" because they don't know what to do with plain ASCII,
    or because you are agreeing with the routing suggestion (by which I
    meant USB, wifi, network etc. ports)? I _think_ you meant the former.

    So what _would_ a modern printer do if sent some plain ASCII (including newlines, and perhaps a Ctrl-Z at the end) - assuming the routing via
    USB or whatever was handled?
    []
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    They are public servants, so we will threat them rather as Flashman
    treats servants. - Stephen Fry on some people's attitudo to the BBC, in
    Radio Times, 3-9 July 2010

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From ....winston@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 11:30:27
    On 07/25/2026 6:11 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:
    [...]
    Sequence of events:
    Priceline was the original company.
    Priceline.com was the initial service
    Priceline went public and incorporated
    Priceline acquired Booking.com
    Priceline renamed and incorporated as Priceline Group Inc.
    Priceline Group renamed as Booking Holdings.

    Booking Holdings current and parent company is and remains Priceline
    regardless of Booking.com history before being acquired.

    We're clearly on different pages. I was talking about the history of Booking.com, which should be clear from my very first comment:

    "Booking.com is a Dutch company, so you get what you pay for! :-)"

    EOD. Better luck next time.

    It's both. Started as a Dutch Company, still operates from the
    Netherlands, but fully owned by an American company(Booking Holdings is
    the current parent company which was originally Priceline)

    --
    ...w­¤?ń?¤

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 11:49:08
    On Sat, 7/25/2026 10:27 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/25 11:26:46, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer
    driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Is your "Exactly" because they don't know what to do with plain ASCII,
    or because you are agreeing with the routing suggestion (by which I
    meant USB, wifi, network etc. ports)? I _think_ you meant the former.

    So what _would_ a modern printer do if sent some plain ASCII (including newlines, and perhaps a Ctrl-Z at the end) - assuming the routing via
    USB or whatever was handled?
    []


    I ran this through CoPilot, and the answer is "moderately humorous".

    *********************** CoPilot Question *******************************

    In Windows, on the local machine you can define a
    printer share using "net use" and then copy /b
    some text to that printer. According to the Microsoft documentation

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-prsod/727b1901-dc2e-4d46-8ec4-cf233dcc22a9

    this copy operation arrives at the "File Server Service" and then
    to the "Print spooler service" on the remote machine. And from there it is sent to
    the printer (could be a USB printer).

    Since the original file to be printed is just text,
    and it is copied into a stream of sorts, there does not
    appear to be any preamble to the printer, to tell the
    printer to switch modes or prepare for a kind of
    "line printer session".

    The question then, is what typically happens between the
    remote "print spooler service" and the printer attached
    to that remote machine ?

    *********************** CoPilot Answer *********************************

    **Short answer:**
    When you do `copy /b file \\server\printer`, the remote Windows print spooler does *not*
    magically convert your plain text into a printer-friendly format. It treats your data as **RAW**
    and hands it directly to the printer driver?s ?print processor.? What happens next depends
    entirely on the printer driver and the printer?s native capabilities.

    Below is the detailed, architecture?level explanation.

    ---

    ## What the Windows print spooler actually receives
    The Microsoft documentation confirms that an SMB print share accepts the incoming bytes
    and passes them to the print subsystem as a **RAW** print job.

    - The spooler supports RAW jobs explicitly
    [Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/printdocs/print-spooler)

    - SMB/RAP redirector simply opens the print queue and writes the bytes into a spool file,
    then hands the job to the print processor associated with that queue
    ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-prsod/a84201ad-7700-4c19-98c4-3981341c549c )

    There is **no preamble**, no StartDoc/EndDoc from your side, and no GDI rendering.
    The spooler sees only a blob of bytes.

    ---

    ## What happens inside the remote print spooler
    Once the spooler has the RAW job, the following components act:

    ### 1. **Print Processor**
    The print processor is responsible for interpreting the job?s data type.
    For RAW jobs, the processor typically does **no transformation** and simply streams the
    bytes to the printer driver. This is explicitly described in the Windows printing
    architecture: RAW data is passed through unchanged to the printer driver

    ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-rprn/cb939ecf-6d7b-4139-87fb-d94ef6dc861a )

    ### 2. **Printer Driver**
    This is the critical part.

    Most modern Windows printers are **GDI printers** (also called ?host?based printers?).
    These printers **do not understand plain text** or PCL/PostScript directly. They expect
    a fully rendered raster page produced by the driver.

    If you send plain text RAW data to such a printer, the driver will typically:

    - Treat the RAW data as already-formatted printer language (PCL/PS/etc.)
    - Attempt to send it directly to the printer
    - The printer will then either:
    - Print garbage,
    - Print nothing,
    - Or reject the job.

    This is because GDI printers rely on the Windows driver to convert text into raster graphics. RAW bypasses that pipeline entirely.

    ### 3. **Printer Hardware**
    Only certain classes of printers can make sense of raw text:

    - **Line printers / dot?matrix printers** that accept ASCII directly
    - **PCL printers** (if your text happens to be valid PCL commands)
    - **PostScript printers** (if your text is valid PS)
    - **Receipt printers** (ESC/POS)
    - **Label printers** (ZPL, EPL, TSPL)

    If the printer is one of these, the RAW text may print as expected.

    If the printer is a USB?connected GDI printer (very common for consumer inkjets and lasers),
    it cannot interpret plain text at all.

    ---

    ## Why no preamble is added
    Because RAW jobs are defined as "already device-ready."
    The spooler assumes the client has produced the printer?s native language. It does **not**
    insert form feeds, page breaks, or mode switches. This is by design: RAW is meant for
    specialized printers and automation workflows.

    ---

    ## So what *actually* happens between spooler and printer?
    Putting it all together:

    1. Your copy /b sends bytes to the SMB print share.
    2. SMB server hands them to the print spooler as a RAW job.
    3. The print processor does no conversion.
    4. The printer driver sends the bytes directly to the printer port.
    5. The printer either:
    - Interprets the bytes as valid printer language and prints correctly, **or**
    - Fails to interpret them and prints garbage or nothing.

    There is **no automatic text-to-raster conversion**, no ?line printer mode,? and no fallback formatting.

    ---

    ## Why this works on some printers but not others
    If you have ever used `copy /b file LPT1:` on old dot?matrix printers, it works because
    those printers *natively* understood ASCII and simple control codes.

    Modern USB printers do not. They expect a fully rendered page from the driver.

    ---

    ## Final takeaway
    **RAW printing bypasses all formatting.**
    The remote spooler does not add a preamble, does not convert text, and does not switch
    the printer into any special mode. It simply streams your bytes to the printer driver,
    which then sends them to the printer. Whether the printer can interpret those bytes is
    entirely dependent on the printer?s native language.

    If you want predictable output on modern printers, you must either:

    - Use GDI printing (StartDocPrinter + EMF), or
    - Generate the printer?s native language (PCL, PS, ESC/POS, ZPL, etc.) and send *that* as RAW.
    *********************** END: CoPilot Answer ***************************

    So this process then, is "dumb as a rock" :-) Life is full of mysteries.

    Paul


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 17:17:55
    On 2026/7/25 16:49:8, Paul wrote:
    []
    ## Why this works on some printers but not others
    If you have ever used `copy /b file LPT1:` on old dot?matrix printers, it works because
    those printers *natively* understood ASCII and simple control codes.

    Modern USB printers do not. They expect a fully rendered page from the driver.
    []
    It used to be: printers expected plain text bytes _by default_, and
    printed the text (if they were a dot matrix printer rather than a
    daisywheel or golfball, using a character generator within the printer);
    if you wanted them to produce anything _other_ than plain text, you had
    to send a control sequence _embedded in your text_ (often called an
    "Escape sequence", because they started with the escape character, 27). Nowadays, many (perhaps most) printers _expect_ the computer to have
    created a graphical representation of what is to be printed, and
    wouldn't know what to do with plain text if they _did_ receive it.

    (Incidentally, "dot matrix" is _not_ a good name for those printers
    which had a vertical row of pins in a print head - because _all_
    printers [_except_ daisywheels and golfballs, and typesetting machines
    if anyone still uses those] print a matrix of dots. I used to call them
    "impact printers", but it's just occurred to me that golfball/daisywheel
    ones are impact too.)
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Proving you wrong is not an attack.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 19:14:49
    On 2026-07-25 17:15, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    My solution is to run all my copypasta thru a normalizer which makes all >>> the inconsistent text consistent, before I edit the results for posting.

    Your problem is of your own creation: you use software that doesn't
    handle unicode.

    I don't have any problem copy pasting stuff from anywhere.

    Hi Carlos,

    I never disagree with a logically sensible statement, and, on the other
    hand, I often disagree with statements which are illogically phrased.

    Yours is both. :)

    On the one hand, you're completely correct that my "software" doesn't
    handle Unicode well, so that is certainly a creation of my own doing.

    But, on the other hand, even if the software handled Unicode gracefully, mixing Unicode with ASCII would still make it an inconsistent mess.

    Why would I mix? I only use unicode.


    The normalizer solves both problems.

    But back to Paul's issue, what he's talking about is real.
    I was simply confirming that Paul's statements are exactly what I also see.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 19:27:00
    On 2026-07-25 18:17, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/25 16:49:8, Paul wrote:
    []
    ## Why this works on some printers but not others
    If you have ever used `copy /b file LPT1:` on old dot?matrix printers, it works because
    those printers *natively* understood ASCII and simple control codes.

    Modern USB printers do not. They expect a fully rendered page from the driver.
    []
    It used to be: printers expected plain text bytes _by default_, and
    printed the text (if they were a dot matrix printer rather than a
    daisywheel or golfball, using a character generator within the printer);
    if you wanted them to produce anything _other_ than plain text, you had
    to send a control sequence _embedded in your text_ (often called an
    "Escape sequence", because they started with the escape character, 27).

    That was on impact printers (including dot matrix printers), because
    they processed a line (or a char) at a time. It is not on a laser printer.

    Nowadays, many (perhaps most) printers _expect_ the computer to have
    created a graphical representation of what is to be printed, and
    wouldn't know what to do with plain text if they _did_ receive it.

    (Incidentally, "dot matrix" is _not_ a good name for those printers
    which had a vertical row of pins in a print head - because _all_
    printers [_except_ daisywheels and golfballs, and typesetting machines
    if anyone still uses those] print a matrix of dots. I used to call them "impact printers", but it's just occurred to me that golfball/daisywheel
    ones are impact too.)


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 21:17:46
    On 2026-07-25 20:03, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    But, on the other hand, even if the software handled Unicode gracefully, >>> mixing Unicode with ASCII would still make it an inconsistent mess.

    Why would I mix? I only use unicode.

    Again, I never disagree with a logically defensible sensible statement.

    If you never copy from a variety of sources, then your editing will likely
    be consistent in that those sources, if they all use Unicode, will match
    your punctuation formats (e.g., non-breaking hyphens, curly quotes, etc.).

    But I happen to edit from as many sources as my data comes from.
    Some of those sources utilize ascii quotes. Others curly quotes.

    For consistency, I normalize them to a single set of characters.
    I choose ASCII since everything is compatible with ASCII.

    But what do *you* do, when you combine various sources, some of which use
    one type of punctuation, while the others use a different punctuation type?

    I just copy paste.

    Tell me two sample links to pages that show both types of text, and I
    will try to copy paste in my way.

    If you mean that some places use "quotes" while other sites use
    ?quotes?, I might bother to change to the second type, which is the
    modern style recommendation. Possibly LibreOffice might have macros to
    do this.

    Everything nowdays handles Unicode correctly.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 21:48:09
    On 2026-07-25 13:05, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-25 01:56, Paul wrote:
    On Fri, 7/24/2026 5:15 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 23:09, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 21:1:58, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 21:06, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    []
    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the
    file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern >>>>>> printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now >>>>>> complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Because "copy file printer" can not handle complex situations like
    Unicode or rich text.

    And if there is an EOF character, it stops printing.

    I forgot the /B switch that someone mentioned earlier in the thread.
    Without it, COPY is indeed a text command (old definition of text -
    probably 7-bit, ASCII!), and indeed the EOF character would end it.
    With
    the /B (binary) switch, I think COPY uses the file size to know when to >>>> stop.

    8 bit.

    I remember pin printers handling the 8 bits, and having a bank of
    switches to select the codepage, ie, what to print for chars above
    127. And this was in the 80's.

    Older printers designed for non IBM-PCs might have been 7 bits.

    Common printers aren't reviewed in any useful way anymore,
    so who knows what protocols or parsing opportunities, work.

    I found a thread, where someone was claiming the copy to remote LPR1
    trick, "drove" a printer that was USB connected on a remote machine.

    There have also been claims in the past, that some printers
    can print a PDF sent to them, and the printer has a PDF parser
    inside. But that is not likely to be a $100 inkjet. Previously,
    a party trick was handling PostScript and LPR, for the PostScript
    printers. Some of those printers had a 25MHz processor inside (RISC).

    Yes, my printer can handle postscript sent directly to it. Raw copy as
    is. Tried in Linux, probably works also in Windows. I think it also
    copes with plain text, but not unicode; however, I don't remember if I actually tested this and what was the result, that would be over 10
    years ago.

    Modern printers of the kind can handle PDF directly. I do not know if
    this is instead of PS.

    It is an HP laserjet printer.

    (~10 year old printer)

    I tested my printer, in Linux. I created a text file which had two
    utf-chars, an then sent it to the printer, raw:

    cer@Laicolasse:~> lpr -l p.txt
    cer@Laicolasse:~> file p.txt
    p.txt: Unicode text, UTF-8 text
    cer@Laicolasse:~>

    The text printed correctly, till it reached the utf-8 chars, then it
    printed three garbage chars. And as the line was too long, it went over
    the right edge.

    I then converted to codepage 850, and tried again:

    cer@Laicolasse:~> iconv --from-code=UTF-8 --to-code=CP850 p.txt -o p-850.txt iconv: illegal input sequence at position 64
    cer@Laicolasse:~> iconv -f UTF-8 -t CP850//TRANSLIT p.txt > p-850.txt cer@Laicolasse:~> less p-850.txt
    cer@Laicolasse:~> file p-850.txt
    p-850.txt: ASCII text
    cer@Laicolasse:~> lpr -l p-850.txt
    cer@Laicolasse:~>

    And it printed correctly.

    Then I edited the file, adding the accented wovels and the ¤. It did not
    print correctly because Linux text doesn't use LF+CR :-D

    So again I edited the text to use a single short line:

    "quotes"  ‚¢£????¤Ø?­!

    It only failed in printing some of the upper case wovels, possibly
    because latin-1 doesn't have them.


    So this laserjet printer can handle raw 8 bit text in codepage latin-1 correctly.

    :-)

    And I know it can also handle postscript sent raw to it, because I
    remember testing this long ago. It must have some algorithm that detects
    the type of data it receives and processes it correctly.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 21:58:32
    On 2026/7/25 18:27:0, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-25 18:17, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/25 16:49:8, Paul wrote:
    []
    ## Why this works on some printers but not others
    If you have ever used `copy /b file LPT1:` on old dot?matrix printers, it works because
    those printers *natively* understood ASCII and simple control codes.

    Modern USB printers do not. They expect a fully rendered page from the driver.
    []
    It used to be: printers expected plain text bytes _by default_, and
    printed the text (if they were a dot matrix printer rather than a
    daisywheel or golfball, using a character generator within the printer);
    if you wanted them to produce anything _other_ than plain text, you had
    to send a control sequence _embedded in your text_ (often called an
    "Escape sequence", because they started with the escape character, 27).

    That was on impact printers (including dot matrix printers), because
    they processed a line (or a char) at a time. It is not on a laser printer.

    A laser printer prints a whole page at a time (it can't do part of a
    page and pause); thus it must have a store for a while page, in
    dot-matrix form. Simpler ones assume/expect the computer to create that
    image for them; more advanced ones (such as the ones that can be fed a postscript file, or from what some here are saying a PDF) are capable of
    doing the graphics generation themselves. There's no reason why they
    shouldn't be able to do that for just plain text too; whether any do, I
    don't know.
    []
    Inkjets are similar, except they _can_ pause between _passes_ of the
    print head, so in theory could get away with less (graphical) storage;
    in practice, I suspect few of them do any graphics generation, relying
    on the driving computer to do it all.

    (Even old impact dot matrix ones - the ones that could print graphics -
    the same applies, though I think their storage was even less, maybe even requiring the computer to feed them graphics at the same speed they
    printed them.)
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    I still think that one of Rachmaninoff's best works was done by
    Addinsel - @cosmeamenta3474 7 years before 2025-10-23

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 17:02:11
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on 25 Jul 2026 10:26:46 GMT, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in

    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer >driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Well, 4 years ago I used a USB cable to connect and used
    copy filename lpt1 (perhaps with a /b. I don't remember) to
    print to a very nice, fairly large, seeemingly recent printer, and it
    worked fine. It was the printer I found in the room I rented. It might
    have been a laser printer. Yes, I wwent back to my downloads file from
    Spring of 2022, April, and found the owners manual. It was a Samsung
    SCX-4x24 or 4x28. I dowoloaded the manual looking for help, but never installed the software because I was trying not to fill my drive with
    extra stuff, and I just used copy.

    The owners manaul knows about win7 and Server 2008, but doesn't mention anything later.

    I wrote the file in some windows program. I'm not sure the line breaks
    were at the same spot as on the screen but the paragraph breaks were and
    the reult looked fine.

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what >> > printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From micky@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 20:47:56
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:36:48 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

    I can't get a text file to print completely.

    What editor would force everything to print? win11 Pro, fully updated,
    but I'm pretty sure the problem will be the same in win10. (I'll send
    the file to my win10 computer and try it.)

    For completeness, I'll tell you that the young man(37)'s father and I
    went to the hearing. It wasn't a little room like expected, just a
    window with a glass in between, one of 10 such windows. I only offered
    her the longest one of the chats, the one which claims to be from the
    alleged lawyer he's dealt with.

    She took it and saved it with the file, but said they generally don't do investigation, which turns out to include not just "face-to-face
    investigation" like Jim Rockford did, but also document investigation,
    which means reading what I brought her. She didn't like that it had no
    phone number for the young man in question, even though it had his name.
    She understood that it was whatsapp and that that is the way whatspp
    does it, but she was stuck.

    She wants my personal observation of what he has said and done. I was
    going to present that orally, but I will do it in writing. Which makes
    sense. They want a written record, and they don't make recordings of
    meetings and certainly not transcriptions of them. She gave me a form
    to file. And I'm going to try to get him to tell me more stuff.

    I'm going to try to get them to accept stuff I personally read on his
    phone, which he lent me for 4 days along with its password.

    His psychiatrists would also not write anything, because of
    patient-doctor confidentiality. So his father only had me and himself.
    But alas, even if they change the payee to his father, it will be joint
    with him, and he'll still be able to remove the money. I think his
    father got some bad advice, to think this would be very helpful, and he
    was pretty depressed that this is not going to work

    Going to court and getting him declared incompetent, and that's
    expensive and will antagonize him more. But I think the psychs could be subpoenaed and their confidentiality broken**. Or getting him to see
    the light, is needed.


    **I remember reading years ago when I googled the various kinds of
    confidential relationships -- they are not all 100% -- that medical confidentiality does not exist in a proceeding to declare one
    incompetent. Hey, I thought, that's when I'd want it most. I don't
    care if you tell the world I have diabetes or high blood pressure. I
    don't want you to help them lock me up. If I were in that situation,
    it would keep me from being forthright with a psych. Almost Catch-22.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Mr. Man-wai Chang@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 09:01:09
    On 7/25/2026 11:51 AM, ....winston wrote:

    Different variables and comments in reference to language and special
    ....
    Notepad, PDF).
    Please try to follow along.

    Um... I could have solved micky's problem
    right away if I was standing next to him/
    her in physical reality. :)

    On 7/19/2026 1:36 AM, micky wrote:

    I can't get a text file to print completely....


    --

    @~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
    / v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
    /( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
    ^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
    The game is afoot... Meow...

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 15:04:17
    On 2026-07-26 01:05, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    I just copy paste.

    Tell me two sample links to pages that show both types of text, and I
    will try to copy paste in my way.

    Unicode:
    <https://gist.github.com/jpassaro/bf400b0410810a071a7fb3509ef6c2c3>
    <https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/n_2000.html>

    Ascii:
    <https://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ascii.html>
    <https://www.asciitable.com/>


    I just copied a chunk of each page into LOwriter, worked fine. Then exported as text, and I will paste it here. use Thunderbird to read it.

    +++----------
    ? Unassigned Digraphs
    Actual Description Vim HTML Hex Dec UTF-8 UTF-16 Category
    Section Latin-1 Supplement
    ˙ NO-BREAK SPACE NS &nbsp; xA0 160 C2 A0 FF FE A0 00 Zs
    ­ INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK !I &iexcl; xA1 161 C2 A1 FF FE A1 00 Po
    › CENT SIGN Ct &cent; xA2 162 C2 A2 FF FE A2 00 Sc


    General Punctuation
    For additional general punctuation characters see also Basic Latin, Latin-1, Supplemental Punctuation and CJK Symbols and Punctuation.
    Spaces
    2000 ˙?˙ En Quad
    ˙ ˙ š 2002˙? en space
    ˙ ˙ ? 0020˙? space
    2001 ˙?˙ Em Quad
    ˙ ˙ = mutton quad
    ˙ ˙ š 2003˙? em space
    ˙ ˙ ? 0020˙? space
    2002 ˙?˙ En Space

    The US ASCII Character Set
    US ASCII, ANSI X3.4-1986 (ISO 646 International Reference Version)
    Codes 0 through 31 and 127 (decimal) are unprintable control characters.
    Code 32 (decimal) is a nonprinting spacing character. Codes 33 through 126 (decimal) are printable graphic characters.
    Legend:
    Char The printed representation of the character, if any
    Dec The decimal code for the character
    Row/Col The decimal row/column representation for the character
    Oct The octal (base 8) code for the character
    Hex The hexadecimal (base 16) code for the character

    Char Dec Col/Row Oct Hex Name and Description

    0 00/00 00 00 NUL (Ctrl-@) NULL
    1 00/01 01 01 SOH (Ctrl-A) START OF HEADING
    2 00/02 02 02 STX (Ctrl-B) START OF TEXT
    3 00/03 03 03 ETX (Ctrl-C) END OF TEXT
    4 00/04 04 04 EOT (Ctrl-D) END OF TRANSMISSION
    5 00/05 05 05 ENQ (Ctrl-E) ENQUIRY
    ASCII Table
    ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Computers can only understand numbers, so an ASCII code is the numerical representation of a character such as 'a' or '@' or an action of some sort. ASCII was developed a long time ago and now the non-printing characters are rarely used for their original purpose. Below is the ASCII character table and this includes descriptions of the first 32 non-printing characters. ASCII was actually designed for use with teletypes and so the descriptions are somewhat obscure. If someone says they want your CV however in ASCII format, all this means is they want 'plain' text with no formatting such as tabs, bold or underscoring - the raw format that any computer can understand. This is usually so they can easily import the file into their own applications without issues. Notepad.exe creates ASCII text, or in MS Word you can save a file as 'text only'

    {The table here got removed, it is a graphic.}

    ----------++-


    If you mean that some places use "quotes" while other sites use
    ?quotes­, I might bother to change to the second type, which is the
    modern style recommendation. Possibly LibreOffice might have macros to
    do this.

    Yup. First you used straight quotes & then curly quotes.
    I know it's a test, but my point is that it's inconsistent.

    Ok, yes.



    Everything nowdays handles Unicode correctly.


    Almost everything.


    USAians :-P

    But the inconsistency will remain if you copy from multiple sources with different punctuation characters.

    I was taught to select a grammatical style and stick to it.
    a. For example, I deplore the Oxford comma.
    b. And I don't use em dashes when a comma would suffice.
    c. And I put my periods (full stops) outside the ending quotes.
    etc.

    Worse, I don't mix curly punctuation with straight punctuation.
    Especially in source code that I write (it confuses programs).

    Right, compilers do not like curly quotes.

    But you see, matters of style is a different thing from straight copy paste not working.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 18:22:40
    Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    On 2026-07-25 17:15, Maria Sophia wrote:
    Carlos E. R. wrote:
    My solution is to run all my copypasta thru a normalizer which makes all >>> the inconsistent text consistent, before I edit the results for posting. >>
    Your problem is of your own creation: you use software that doesn't
    handle unicode.

    I don't have any problem copy pasting stuff from anywhere.

    Hi Carlos,

    I never disagree with a logically sensible statement, and, on the other hand, I often disagree with statements which are illogically phrased.

    Yours is both. :)

    On the one hand, you're completely correct that my "software" doesn't handle Unicode well, so that is certainly a creation of my own doing.

    But, on the other hand, even if the software handled Unicode gracefully, mixing Unicode with ASCII would still make it an inconsistent mess.

    Why would I mix? I only use unicode.

    Well, the 'bottom part' of UTF-8 *is* ASCII, isn't it, so there would
    be no 'mixing'.

    But 'Arlen' is probably implicitly talking about some 'extended ASCII'
    - i.e. *8*-bit, not 7 - character set"the initial company", which is
    probably *not* compatible with UTF-8.

    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Mapping_and_encodings>

    The normalizer solves both problems.

    But back to Paul's issue, what he's talking about is real.
    I was simply confirming that Paul's statements are exactly what I also see.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 18:28:46
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/25 11:26:46, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Is your "Exactly" because they don't know what to do with plain ASCII,
    or because you are agreeing with the routing suggestion (by which I
    meant USB, wifi, network etc. ports)? I _think_ you meant the former.

    Yes, I mean(t) the former.

    So what _would_ a modern printer do if sent some plain ASCII (including newlines, and perhaps a Ctrl-Z at the end) - assuming the routing via
    USB or whatever was handled?

    As you wrote elsewhere, a modern printer *could* theorically handle a
    plain ASCII input stream, providid it had the logic/processing
    capability do do the neccessary work, especially for laserprinters and
    inkjet printer (which are normally bi-directional).

    But that's theory. In practice, I think they will just fail.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Frank Slootweg@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 18:42:16
    micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on 25 Jul 2026 10:26:46 GMT, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in >>
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer >driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Well, 4 years ago I used a USB cable to connect and used
    copy filename lpt1 (perhaps with a /b. I don't remember) to
    print to a very nice, fairly large, seeemingly recent printer, and it
    worked fine. It was the printer I found in the room I rented. It might
    have been a laser printer. Yes, I wwent back to my downloads file from
    Spring of 2022, April, and found the owners manual. It was a Samsung SCX-4x24 or 4x28. I dowoloaded the manual looking for help, but never installed the software because I was trying not to fill my drive with
    extra stuff, and I just used copy.

    As Google shows (search on "define: lpt1"), LPT1 is the first (hence
    1), *parallel* (i.e. a parallel interface) 'Line Printer'.

    So you must have either used a parallel port or some hardware or
    software which emulates a parallel port.

    For example I used a USB-to-parallel cable (with built-in electronics)
    to connect an old parallel HP LaserJet to a USB port of my laptop. I
    just used that printer with the Windows Printer Spooler, but it might
    have also worked as LPT1.

    The owners manaul knows about win7 and Server 2008, but doesn't mention anything later.

    I wrote the file in some windows program. I'm not sure the line breaks
    were at the same spot as on the screen but the paragraph breaks were and
    the reult looked fine.

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what >> > printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 22:03:35
    On 2026-07-26 20:28, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/25 11:26:46, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to >>> be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer >>> driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Is your "Exactly" because they don't know what to do with plain ASCII,
    or because you are agreeing with the routing suggestion (by which I
    meant USB, wifi, network etc. ports)? I _think_ you meant the former.

    Yes, I mean(t) the former.

    So what _would_ a modern printer do if sent some plain ASCII (including
    newlines, and perhaps a Ctrl-Z at the end) - assuming the routing via
    USB or whatever was handled?

    As you wrote elsewhere, a modern printer *could* theorically handle a plain ASCII input stream, providid it had the logic/processing
    capability do do the neccessary work, especially for laserprinters and
    inkjet printer (which are normally bi-directional).

    But that's theory. In practice, I think they will just fail.

    I posted two days ago about this scenario by testing it. My laserjet
    prints text (not ascii) if sent directly to it. It is using the latin-1
    aka 850 codepage, 8 bits.

    It is a modern printer of about 10 years of age.


    Why does it have this feature, no idea, I see no practical use to it.



    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 16:11:56
    On Sun, 7/26/2026 2:28 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/25 11:26:46, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    []
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer >>> driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Is your "Exactly" because they don't know what to do with plain ASCII,
    or because you are agreeing with the routing suggestion (by which I
    meant USB, wifi, network etc. ports)? I _think_ you meant the former.

    Yes, I mean(t) the former.

    So what _would_ a modern printer do if sent some plain ASCII (including
    newlines, and perhaps a Ctrl-Z at the end) - assuming the routing via
    USB or whatever was handled?

    As you wrote elsewhere, a modern printer *could* theorically handle a
    plain ASCII input stream, providid it had the logic/processing
    capability do do the neccessary work, especially for laserprinters and
    inkjet printer (which are normally bi-directional).

    But that's theory. In practice, I think they will just fail.


    The situation is relatively simple.

    Popular formats for printers ("standards") will have
    a header with some amount of metadata in it. The same
    way as the first sector of an NTFS partition, has
    the letters "NTFS" in it.

    If a printer buffers the first 1KB characters, and
    finds no "magic" string, then the protocol is RAW. And it prints
    what it sees. Whether it handles ASCII, extended ASCII,
    Unicode, that will vary with the epoch and with what is
    possible.

    This handling can either be in the driver (for "dumb" devices),
    or in the printer.

    For a PDF capable printer, all it has to see is the "PDF"
    at the very beginning of the file.

    *******

    In this example, they are using monochrome laser as their printer,
    and having a problem with a program doing the RAW stream, whereas
    the "micky command" method works with that laser.

    https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/LaserJet-Printing/Send-Raw-Print-Jobs-do-not-print/td-p/6569853

    "With the older "v3 printer model" drivers, 'passthrough' of raw
    (printer-specific) data is achieved with the 'raw print data' solution
    by specifying a datatype of RAW.

    But with the newer (XPS-based) "v4 printer model" drivers,
    'passthrough' appears to require use of a datatype of XPS_PASS.
    "

    And that's the kind of device I'd be trying this on, is a machine that
    is more likely to have a processor inside, and isn't a dumb inkjet.

    The operation may still work, if you write your own code to
    inject into the print spooler, with the right class specified.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Paul@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 16:32:02
    On Sun, 7/26/2026 2:42 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on 25 Jul 2026 10:26:46 GMT, Frank Slootweg
    <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in >>>>
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now
    complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to
    be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer >>> driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Well, 4 years ago I used a USB cable to connect and used
    copy filename lpt1 (perhaps with a /b. I don't remember) to
    print to a very nice, fairly large, seeemingly recent printer, and it
    worked fine. It was the printer I found in the room I rented. It might
    have been a laser printer. Yes, I wwent back to my downloads file from
    Spring of 2022, April, and found the owners manual. It was a Samsung
    SCX-4x24 or 4x28. I dowoloaded the manual looking for help, but never
    installed the software because I was trying not to fill my drive with
    extra stuff, and I just used copy.

    As Google shows (search on "define: lpt1"), LPT1 is the first (hence
    1), *parallel* (i.e. a parallel interface) 'Line Printer'.

    So you must have either used a parallel port or some hardware or
    software which emulates a parallel port.

    For example I used a USB-to-parallel cable (with built-in electronics)
    to connect an old parallel HP LaserJet to a USB port of my laptop. I
    just used that printer with the Windows Printer Spooler, but it might
    have also worked as LPT1.

    The owners manaul knows about win7 and Server 2008, but doesn't mention
    anything later.

    I wrote the file in some windows program. I'm not sure the line breaks
    were at the same spot as on the screen but the paragraph breaks were and
    the reult looked fine.

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what >>>>> printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)

    The USB print adapter, only works with printers, and is not a
    general purpose parallel port (four modes). Just in case you were thinking
    that was the case, the hardware is missing the software to do that.
    It supports one specific mode, supported by the class-driver for
    the purpose of printing.

    If you want a real parallel port (different driver), you'll have to work a bit harder
    to get it. Oxford Semiconductor (UK), known here as OxSemi, made a fine
    PCIe chip for the job, with two serial ports, one parallel port, and
    various chip part numbers (where one of the port types could be turned
    off, or both port types were turned on), offered an easy way to have
    a parallel port. I have one, which only does parallel, and it was
    to be used with my FPGA kit and JTAG programming adapter (which plugs
    into a parallel port). OxSemi was "bought and crushed" as a strategy,
    so they're not available any more, and best case, you'd be looking for
    a chip from an Indian fab as a replacement for it. And after COVID
    and tariffs, who knows what plugin card companies still exist. A lot
    of smaller Chinese semi companies (fabless ones) were also wiped out
    by recent events. If you're looking for semiconductors, you'd better
    be an AI Techbro these days. Like, try and find even a decent SATA
    adapter, and the pickings available are pretty weird (lots of stuff
    that isn't full-bandwidth, which I hate).

    As an example of the esoteric, the Meinburg NTP software, now
    has an interface, to use a real parallel port and some signal
    on it, to pick up the 1PPS signal from a GPS. The "normal" interface
    on the GPS, is a serial port at 9600 baud (TX,RX,GND). The 1PPS signal
    is tightly synchronized to the one second pulse determination, and
    going through the parallel port card, is considered to be a "fast path"
    to reaching the driver. And for that, you can't use a USB printer adapter,
    as it doesn't support that mode (and the latency through the print
    adapter would be too high), and you have to dig through your
    junk pile to find a PCIe parallel port (four modes) to plug into your desktop.

    Paul

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 21:32:20
    On 2026/7/26 21:3:35, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    []
    I posted two days ago about this scenario by testing it. My laserjet
    prints text (not ascii) if sent directly to it. It is using the latin-1
    aka 850 codepage, 8 bits.

    It is a modern printer of about 10 years of age.


    Why does it have this feature, no idea, I see no practical use to it.

    It allows you to print text from anything that can send data to it,
    without needing a driver. Useful if, for example, you've got some text
    you need to print, but have no internet to get a driver, or if the
    manufacturer has gone out of business or stopped (or never started)
    supporting the combination of that printer model and your OS.


    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    "Good artists copy, great artists steal." - Pablo Piacsso

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 22:48:46
    On 2026-07-26 22:32, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/26 21:3:35, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    []
    I posted two days ago about this scenario by testing it. My laserjet
    prints text (not ascii) if sent directly to it. It is using the latin-1
    aka 850 codepage, 8 bits.

    It is a modern printer of about 10 years of age.


    Why does it have this feature, no idea, I see no practical use to it.

    It allows you to print text from anything that can send data to it,
    without needing a driver. Useful if, for example, you've got some text
    you need to print, but have no internet to get a driver, or if the manufacturer has gone out of business or stopped (or never started) supporting the combination of that printer model and your OS.

    If I wanted to print plain text directly from the computer, raw, I would
    not choose a laser, a one page at a time printer. It would be an inkjet
    or a ribbon printer. Even a thermal printer. Anything that can print a
    line at a time. Even better, a char at a time.


    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Hank Rogers@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 18:02:33
    Paul wrote on 7/26/2026 3:32 PM:
    On Sun, 7/26/2026 2:42 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
    micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:
    In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on 25 Jul 2026 10:26:46 GMT, Frank Slootweg
    <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

    J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
    On 2026/7/24 13:40:32, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-24 14:34, micky wrote:
    []
    So the mapping command was
    net use lpt1: \\Laptop-Dell2025\Brother /persistent:yes

    And the print command was
    copy "C:\Data\Jack\Whatsapptest.txt" lpt1

    I was going to say "have you tried with a colon on the end (i. e.
    'LPT1:')", but ...

    No, this kind of command can no longer work. Rather, open the file in >>>>>
    ... I suspected that was the case. Does it not work because modern
    printers don't know what to do if fed plain ASCII, or because the now >>>>> complex routing is a lot more, well, complex than a parallel (or
    serial!) port used to be? Or both?

    Exactly. A 'modern' (read: last two decades or so) printer expects to >>>> be fed PCL (Printer Command Language) or some such protocol by a printer >>>> driver. The LPT device does not have such a protocol.

    Well, 4 years ago I used a USB cable to connect and used
    copy filename lpt1 (perhaps with a /b. I don't remember) to
    print to a very nice, fairly large, seeemingly recent printer, and it
    worked fine. It was the printer I found in the room I rented. It might
    have been a laser printer. Yes, I wwent back to my downloads file from
    Spring of 2022, April, and found the owners manual. It was a Samsung
    SCX-4x24 or 4x28. I dowoloaded the manual looking for help, but never
    installed the software because I was trying not to fill my drive with
    extra stuff, and I just used copy.

    As Google shows (search on "define: lpt1"), LPT1 is the first (hence
    1), *parallel* (i.e. a parallel interface) 'Line Printer'.

    So you must have either used a parallel port or some hardware or
    software which emulates a parallel port.

    For example I used a USB-to-parallel cable (with built-in electronics)
    to connect an old parallel HP LaserJet to a USB port of my laptop. I
    just used that printer with the Windows Printer Spooler, but it might
    have also worked as LPT1.

    The owners manaul knows about win7 and Server 2008, but doesn't mention >>> anything later.

    I wrote the file in some windows program. I'm not sure the line breaks
    were at the same spot as on the screen but the paragraph breaks were and >>> the reult looked fine.

    some editor that shows it complete, then tell it to print choosing what >>>>>> printer to use.

    That's what, in effect, most of this thread has been about :-)

    The USB print adapter, only works with printers, and is not a
    general purpose parallel port (four modes). Just in case you were thinking that was the case, the hardware is missing the software to do that.
    It supports one specific mode, supported by the class-driver for
    the purpose of printing.

    If you want a real parallel port (different driver), you'll have to work a bit harder
    to get it. Oxford Semiconductor (UK), known here as OxSemi, made a fine
    PCIe chip for the job, with two serial ports, one parallel port, and
    various chip part numbers (where one of the port types could be turned
    off, or both port types were turned on), offered an easy way to have
    a parallel port. I have one, which only does parallel, and it was
    to be used with my FPGA kit and JTAG programming adapter (which plugs
    into a parallel port). OxSemi was "bought and crushed" as a strategy,
    so they're not available any more, and best case, you'd be looking for
    a chip from an Indian fab as a replacement for it. And after COVID
    and tariffs, who knows what plugin card companies still exist. A lot
    of smaller Chinese semi companies (fabless ones) were also wiped out
    by recent events. If you're looking for semiconductors, you'd better
    be an AI Techbro these days. Like, try and find even a decent SATA
    adapter, and the pickings available are pretty weird (lots of stuff
    that isn't full-bandwidth, which I hate).

    As an example of the esoteric, the Meinburg NTP software, now
    has an interface, to use a real parallel port and some signal
    on it, to pick up the 1PPS signal from a GPS. The "normal" interface
    on the GPS, is a serial port at 9600 baud (TX,RX,GND). The 1PPS signal
    is tightly synchronized to the one second pulse determination, and
    going through the parallel port card, is considered to be a "fast path"
    to reaching the driver. And for that, you can't use a USB printer adapter,
    as it doesn't support that mode (and the latency through the print
    adapter would be too high), and you have to dig through your
    junk pile to find a PCIe parallel port (four modes) to plug into your desktop.

    Paul


    Damn, Paul (et al), I never realized how hard it is to print a text
    file. It has always worked for me with any text editor I ever used.
    Shit, I'm just now realizing that I was just lucky all these years, and
    could have had a hell of a time printing anything.

    I guess I am the luckiest person on the planet, but I do give
    condolences to those unable to print. Maybe some day this will be fixed.

    I'll stay tuned. Mary Sophe will probably publish a tutorial giving all
    the details of how we can now print text files.


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From J. P. Gilliver@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 27, 2026 14:50:54
    On 2026/7/26 21:48:46, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-26 22:32, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/26 21:3:35, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    []
    I posted two days ago about this scenario by testing it. My laserjet
    prints text (not ascii) if sent directly to it. It is using the latin-1
    aka 850 codepage, 8 bits.

    It is a modern printer of about 10 years of age.


    Why does it have this feature, no idea, I see no practical use to it.

    It allows you to print text from anything that can send data to it,
    without needing a driver. Useful if, for example, you've got some text
    you need to print, but have no internet to get a driver, or if the
    manufacturer has gone out of business or stopped (or never started)
    supporting the combination of that printer model and your OS.

    If I wanted to print plain text directly from the computer, raw, I would
    not choose a laser, a one page at a time printer. It would be an inkjet
    or a ribbon printer. Even a thermal printer. Anything that can print a
    line at a time. Even better, a char at a time.


    I agree. However, if stuck somewhere without access to anything but the
    laser - for example, if you're in a business facility that provides a
    printer, but your laptop/tablet/whatever has no driver for the provided printer. Yes, ideally, you'd prefer a line - or even character - at a
    time printer, especially if you are wanting to type; however, if you had
    the text already in a file ...
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Old professors don't fade away - they just lose their faculties.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E. R.@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 27, 2026 20:10:32
    On 2026-07-27 15:50, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/26 21:48:46, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    On 2026-07-26 22:32, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
    On 2026/7/26 21:3:35, Carlos E. R. wrote:
    []
    I posted two days ago about this scenario by testing it. My laserjet
    prints text (not ascii) if sent directly to it. It is using the latin-1 >>>> aka 850 codepage, 8 bits.

    It is a modern printer of about 10 years of age.


    Why does it have this feature, no idea, I see no practical use to it.

    It allows you to print text from anything that can send data to it,
    without needing a driver. Useful if, for example, you've got some text
    you need to print, but have no internet to get a driver, or if the
    manufacturer has gone out of business or stopped (or never started)
    supporting the combination of that printer model and your OS.

    If I wanted to print plain text directly from the computer, raw, I would
    not choose a laser, a one page at a time printer. It would be an inkjet
    or a ribbon printer. Even a thermal printer. Anything that can print a
    line at a time. Even better, a char at a time.


    I agree. However, if stuck somewhere without access to anything but the
    laser - for example, if you're in a business facility that provides a printer, but your laptop/tablet/whatever has no driver for the provided printer. Yes, ideally, you'd prefer a line - or even character - at a
    time printer, especially if you are wanting to type; however, if you had
    the text already in a file ...

    Sure. Completeness. :-)


    I just remember that my ribbon and pin printer had a typewriter mode.
    Send a word, the paper would go down an inch, print the word, then go up
    an inch allowing the operator to read the paper. So to fill a form,
    perhaps. I tested the thing, but never actually used it.

    It detected words with a timeout. Stop sending things, it would start
    printing the buffer.

    --
    Cheers,
    Carlos E.R.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)