Action Statement

Print ESL textual and graphical regions.

plot OBJECT_NAME [OPTIONS_STRING]

OBJECT_NAME

The identifier for the object you want to print.

OPTIONS_STRING

The plot statement may be followed by parameters contained within a comma or tab delimited string (literal, variable or constant) that has the syntax:

[printer PRINTER_NAME[{,|\t]][nobackground[{,|\t]][noctext[{,|\t]][invertbw]

All the parameters are case insensitive, including the printer name. The order of the parameters is not significant, although the Printer Name must follow the literal "printer".

printer PRINTER_NAME

Place the job in the printer queue for the selected printer.

The name of the printer you enter must  match the name as it appears in the properties dialog for the installed printer, although the case of the characters is not significant. If this option is omitted, the default printer will be used. If the specified printer name is not found, then a printer selection dialog is displayed, if the printer dialog is required, then deliberately use a invalid name e.g. printer listprinters

nobackground

Draw all regions without any background color. This is most useful for hardcopy devices such as plotters and printers with limited color capability. Some of these devices might output the background in a dark color that could obscure the foreground. If you omit this specification, the background is drawn.

noctext

Draw colored textual regions as if they are non-colored. Text is drawn in the foreground color of the region. If you omit this specification, colored text is drawn using the background and foreground colors of individual characters.

invertbw

Draw white as black and black as white. If you omit this specification, white and black are not inverted.

Description

Use this statement to print ESL text and graphical regions on any output device that has a Windows driver. You can print a selected object;, however, the plot statement will not output image regions, or Windows-controlled objects such as dialog boxes, action bars, etc.

When an object is plotted, it is drawn on the output page with the same relative position and size as it is displayed on the monitor. To control the scaling of objects printed, set the SCALEX and SCALEY parameters in the ESL configuration file, which define the multiplication factor for the width and height respectively. (Note. Pre version 20.20, the scaling factors were defined in an initialization "ESLPLOT.INI", which must be located in the "Windows" directory.)

When plotting objects containing True Type fonts, the fonts appear approximately 4 points sizes larger than the same point size in a Microsoft Word document using the same fonts.

You can capture the current screen image to the clipboard by pressing the Print Screen button; you can capture the currently focused window by pressing Alt+Print Screen.

Errors

error in plotting: syntax error in option string

One or more of the options in the plot action statement are incorrect.

error in plotting: can't create printer device context

The Windows Spooler is improperly configured.

error in plotting: unsupported version of Windows

The operating system being used with ESL must Windows XP or later.

error in plotting: cannot print {TypeOfRegion}

Only certain types of regions can be plotted.

error in plotting: printer failed to initialise

The printer is not correctly configured.

Example

 

response to Print_Key

   plot Graph "printer PostScript Printer"