Subject: e-mail print command

From: roland cook <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 07:33:17 -0700 (PDT)

On my PC (486, 8 MB ram, Windows 3.1) Pine has worked extremely well until
recently on printing out e-mail from the screen. I currently use the
Windows Terminal utility program for e-mail.

Now, when I use the command "Y" to print out an e-mail letter, if the
letter is about 1K bytes or less, Pine prints out the letter on "attached
desktop (ANSI) printer" with no faults.

However if the letter exceeds about 1K in length, Pine stops displaying
the balance of the letter, but continues sending all screens that occur
following the aborted letter to the buffer from which the printer is
loaded in my PC, until I quit Pine. When I log off the host, the printer
prints out the part of the letter before it was aborted, plus all of the
screens transmitted to my PC after the partial letter.  The buffer in my
PC for the printer shows perhaps 20K to 30K of material for printout,
while the entire letter may have been only 2K.

I have discussed this with local manager, and looked at the debug files
for Pine, but have been unable to find any indication, except the word 
"babble" in the debug file, which might refer to the difficulty.

I have re-loaded Pine, with default settings, but this produces the same
results. 

Is there any way to diagnose this problem and correct it?

Roland Cook

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 17:32:46 +0100 (BST)

It *sounds* like Pine is sending data to your printer at a rate faster
than it can cope with (ie, print out).  This causes a backlog, which build
up in the printer's internal memory buffer.

When this becomes (nearly) full the printer attempts to tell the thing
sending the data to stop for a while.  This can be done in one of two ways
(depending on your printer model, how it is configured, and the lead
connecting it).

Printers with a parallel printer interface often (but not always) use
"hardware handshaking".  This involves an extra wire which the printer
uses to signal whether it accepted the last data character or not.

The alternative is "software flow control".  With this two special control
characters are used to mean "stop sending data" and "resume sending data".
These are invariably Ctrl/S and Ctrl/Q respectively.

By default Pine does not honour these characters (if it did, and the user
accidentally typed Ctrl/S on the keyboard Pine would appear to hang
indefinitely -- actually until a Ctrl/Q were typed).

However it is possible to tell Pine to honour them, and is what you should
try in the first instance.  You do this very simply:

*  Start Pine, and go to the Setup Configuration screen ("S" then "C" from
   the Main Menu).

*  Look for the feature called "preserve-start-stop-characters" and make
   sure it is selected (an "X" appears in the box next to it).

*  Exit from the Setup Configuration screen, locate a reasonably long
   message, and try printing it.

Good luck!

Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

---

From: roland cook <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 11:16:17 -0700 (PDT)

> up in the printer's internal memory buffer.

First, thank you for your prompt reply and attention to this problem.

Second, I have used Pine for about two years, with no problem at all.
Several weeks ago the host found a defective telephone line that was
causing many problems, apart from Pine, such as login, carrier drop, etc.
On resuming use of Pine following this disaster, Pine now shows the
symptoms I described.

Third, I am apparently the only one on this host having this problem!
This would point to my computer, although nothing has changed.  I have
checked all lines etc. On everything but the printout command Pine
shows no other symptoms, except it was truncating various messages on
the screen, overlapping other things, and generally misbehaving in minor
ways.  But it would export files, save, etc. all in good order.  It will
display everything on the screen also.

Fourth, my terminal setting in windows is set for 300 lines, before
loading into a buffer for printing (not the printer buffer) -- that is,
lines, not bytes, about 24K bytes, in other words.

Fifth, when I log out, the file in Windows has all the transmissions from
Pine (every screen, command, etc. sent by the host to my screen) including
the part of the letter that was aborted.  In other words, the "Y" command
successfully downloads the e-mail up to about 1K bytes on the screen and
stops, but continues transmitting from there on into my computer, for
printout when I sign off. There is no limit in any buffer in my computer
that has shown up yet. Pine does not print out the aborted part of the
letter until I sign off.

> sending the data to stop for a while.  This can be done in one of two
ways> (depending on your printer model, how it is configured, and the
lead > connecting it).
> indefinitely -- actually until a Ctrl/Q were typed).

I have tried setting the X-on, X-off in the configurations settings for
Pine and then when the letter aborts using ^Q (X-on) to no avail, And
toggling between ^X and ^Q has no effect either. Of course Pine worked
fine without all this prior to the recent discombobulation.

>    message, and try printing it.
Yes, tried this as described above. Pine's default settings originally
worked OK.