!pr2
!lm12
!rm75
Hierographic Transport (review)...................Mike Laumer

Hierographic Tranport is a Hi-Res printer dump program for the Epson series of printers (MX-70, MX-80 and MX-100).  The program is a very easy to use, menu driven system.  The user manual is only 12 pages long, but most functions are self-apparent.  I used the program for over an hour before I felt the need to refer to the manual.  The program allows very complete control over the dot graphics mode of the Epson printers.

From the menus you can load a Hi-Res picture into either page 1 or page 2.  Selections are provided for normal/inverse picture, normal/rotated pictures, normal/compressed print mode and a setable left margin to allow centering a picture on the page.

You can control magnifying or scaling the picture from 1 to 99 times normal size in the X or Y directions.  This magnification is performed by repeatedly printing each screen dot, in the X and Y directions.  The magnification only affects the printed image and not the screen image.

There is also the ability to select a "window" from the Hi-Res Screen that will be printed on the printer.  That way you can print the rectangular section of the screen that you are interested in.

The "window" is controlled with two sets of cursor control keys.  The "WASZ" keys control the top and left sides of the cursor.  While the familiar "IJKM" keys control the right and bottom sides of the cursor.  This is adequate for controlling the "window" but I would have prefered one set to control inward movement of the cursor sides and the other set to control outward movement of the cursor sides.

The cursor is presented as a set of blinking lines overlayed on the picture image.  This technique uses the HXPLOT function described in the June issue of AAL.  This function allows non-destructive lines to be drawn and erased over the top of an image on the Hi-Res screen.

The cursor lines are automatically stepped by an amount from 1-9, selectable by the number keys.  The space bar or any other valid command key will stop the cursor from advancing.  If "0" is selected for the step distance, the cursor lines will step by 1 whenever a cursor control key is pressed.  This allows a fine positioning mechanism.

Once a "window" is selected the user can have it printed on his printer.  When this is selected, the program automatically checks up on the parameters you have selected and computes the size of the image as it should be on the printer.  If you have scaled the image too big, an error message will result.

The overall design of the program is good.  There are however, a few minor problems in operation of the program.  When the "window" is very large the automatic steps in advancing the "window" occur slowly.  As the size of the "window" gets smaller, the speed of the automatic advance gets very fast making it hard to stop on the exact point you want.  The cursor routine needs a delay which varies by the size of the "window" to help even out the speed of the automatic cursor advance.

There is a record of data kept at the bottom of the screen when you are selecting a "window".  This data provides you with the cursor locations and a unique display of the computed size of the picture to be printed.  As the cursor is moved, the data is updated to the new recomputed picture size.  The size display often flickers because blanks are written to the screen and then the data is written.  If the data were written then the line cleared to the end of line, the flicker would be less noticeable.

The size display had the only bug in the whole program that I could find.  The bug is rather trivial and does not affect the quality of the program.  A bug, however, is a bug!  [ I am sure they will fix it, once they read this review. ]  When a very large scale factor (99 x 99) is used, the routine to print out the size goes bananas and displays some garbage characters on the screen.  When compressed printing is selected (where the dot spacing on the Epson goes from 1/60 of an inch to 1/120 of an inch on the horizontal direction), the size display goes one character too far and scrolls the data up the screen.  As the cursor window is moved arround the scrolling eventually scrolls the title lines off the main menu.

Unless you plan to print a wall mural for the side of your barn, you should never encounter the problem.  A 99 x 99 scaling factor will give a pixel size of 1.5 inches square!  A full screen print would be 38 feet by 21 feet in size!!!  That's way beyond the carriage width of even the MX-100.  The program could handle it though as long as you print it in narrow window strips.  (A nice future enhancement would be for the program to automatically print an oversize picture in strips sized for your particular printer.)

The program has a built in configuration routine and can easily be configured for the following interfaces:

!lm17
Epson APL
CPS Multi-function
Grappler
Micro Buffer II
Prometheus
Apple parallel
Epson APL (modified for 8 bit Transmission)
!lm12

The Epson printers are very popular, but many more brands of printers are now on the market which have comparable capabilities.  For example, the NEC PC-8023, the MPI-88G, and the Okidata series.  I hope that the GSR folks come out with equivalent "Transports" for these other printers.  All of them on the same disk would be especially nice!
!np
Conclusion:  A fine program for graphics printer dumping.  I rate this program a "B+".  A little attention to its few problems would raise the grade to "A".

This program is sold for $39.00 and is available from GSR Associates, P.O. Box 401462, Garland, Texas 75040.  (Don't be afraid of the P. O. Box, they are real people.)
!ps
