Last convenient missing part of qb64 re: (source printing)

[doppler]

It was always nice in the pass to be able to hit ALT-F then P  And watch my line printer hammer out my source (yes: hammer).  I had a belt driven full formed characters banged by column hammers.  Noisy as hell but fast.

Can we get that nice function back?  It's a real pain in the butt, to save source and start an external program like https://www.pnotepad.org/  Just to do a print.  It's nice how programmers notepad treats .bas as Visualbasic and colorizes all the important details.

Is it even possible or is it pie-in-the-sky ?
It would be a real score if fully functional printer interface was done.  That way multi-pages and orientation could be done.

[RNBW]

Try using Dav's IDE  http://www.qbasicnews.com/dav/projects.php#DAVSIDE.  It includes a print function.

[bplus]

Is it even possible or is it pie-in-the-sky ?
It would be a real score if fully functional printer interface was done.  That way multi-pages and orientation could be done.

Are you talking from IDE as a wish list item?

Because you could grow your own for your particular printer and OS.

There are so many OS and printers, I don't see this happening from IDE.

[SMcNeill]

Are you talking from IDE as a wish list item?

Because you could grow your own for your particular printer and OS.

There are so many OS and printers, I don't see this happening from IDE.

IDE could set up a white graphic screen behind the scenes, print code to it in black characters, and then _PRINTIMAGE the screen.  It honestly shouldn't be hard to add, if someone has the time and motivation to go into ide_methods.bas and add/alter it.  My life's just too hectic to hardly even fart at the moment, or else I'd look into adding it myself.

[FellippeHeitor]

I suppose it hasn't been added due to the fact that _PRINTIMAGE is Windows-only. And due to low demand too.

[OldMoses]

I used to print out my source code, but then I never used it. It just sat in a ring binder somewhere. I never revisited it on long, lonely nights... I suppose it was a good non-volatile way of backup, but the ones I would want to do that with are so friggin' long. The other thing is how jumbled it looks with how it wraps my comments and longer code lines around. Gets confusing looking unless I print in landscape orientation.

Sometimes I'll cut and paste to Libre Office and do a little editing and export a pdf, just to see how long it is.

[Bert22306]

Yeah, like OldMoses described, this probably has a lot to do with how we do our work. In my case, I stopped using hard copies of my code eons ago, mostly because they are hard to search, you can't modify them except with a pen, so ultimately, not all that useful. But on the other hand, I very frequently need to copy and paste code into documents. And for that, the QB64 IDE works perfectly.

For Windows machines, though, it ought to be possible to have a "file -> print" command? I don't know the pitfalls of something like that. And like I said, I wouldn't use it, myself.

[Dimster]

I do print out those problematic sections of my code - walk away from the computer, code in hand and find another setting to scribble changes and other ideas. My favorite place to work on changes is beside my pool with a cold beer.

 I copy the code and paste it in a new screen, then copy "LPRINT" and paste that at the beginning of each line. It doesn't take that long to get a printed copy of a section of code but I wouldn't want to do this to print out the whole program. It would be nice to just highlight and print. My OS is windows. Does LPRINT only work with windows??

[doppler]

I am old school.  Print outs were a good way to look at the whole thing.  The white areas of the code pages were a good spot to jot down code or ideas.  It's hard to see the big picture on less than 100 lines of viewport on a screen.  It's really is a problem when you have 5000+ pages of high level, middle level and assembler code to figure out.  Working on a O/S level, it gets gnarly real fast.

In the case of Win10 it's over 1 million lines of code, and I think the number was closer to 2 million.  Nobody and I mean nobody knows the whole O/S system.  There are GURU's who know the big picture and the interfaces.  They don't write the code, they write the concepts and guidance for the coders.  Win 10 programmers have a 24/7/365 job world wide.

Enough of that: I will just continue doing what I have been doing.  Tried dav's ide did not work out.  Tried to compile my source and error'ed out could not find "my.bas location" ie: Not the name of my code.

edit: When did I give win 10 coders 100 days free (265/365).  Get back to work slaves

[bplus]

I use to think this way too. There was something about seeing all your code in a printout that was different than seeing it in screen fulls. It is definitely a different perspective, one more of seeing the whole forest despite all the lovely trees.

I have grown so use to screen fulls of text...

Oh! I also thought I would not be able to live without manuals in book form but now I wouldn't trade Wiki hypertext for a QB64 Reference Manual in book form. Wiki's can be updated almost immediately so they never have to get old!

To all who have or still keep Wiki up to date, Thank you!

[JohnUKresults]

I use the old school method of opening the .bas code up in Wordpad and printing what I need from there.

It was certainly useful for me in QB45 to be able to highlight a section of code with the mouse and then use the "print selected text" option, but the wordpad method works fairly well for me anywway.

[wiggins]

I use an external program to print out the code.  I only do this when there is a logic error that is not easily found.