Guide:Setting up printing in DOSBox‐X - Wengier/dosbox-x-wiki GitHub Wiki

This section lists the available configuration options for the [parallel] section that DOSBox-X provides. They are used to configure the virtual parallel ports provided inside DOSBox-X.

This section lists the available configuration options for the [printer] section of the DOSBox-X config file.

Only one Epson printer can be emulated, and it can only be connected to a single virtual parallel port. It is also recommended for the virtual printer to configure TrueType fonts if you intend to print text.

The Virtual Printer option emulates a dot-matrix printer that follows the Epson ESC/P2 printing standard. It also has partial support for the IBM Pro Printer, where the control codes do not conflict with the Epson control codes.

Generally speaking when looking through the list of supported printers in a DOS application, look for any Epson printer. Epson itself suggested in some of their literature to look for printers in the following order for backward compatibility

• LQ Series - Letter Quality 24-pin

  • B/W - LQ-870, LQ-570/570+, LQ-850+, LQ-850, LQ-510/550, LQ-200, LQ-500, LQ-2550, LQ-2500, LQ-800, LQ-1500

  • Colour - LQ-860+, LQ-860

  • Wide B/W - LQ-2180, LQ-2170/2070, LQ-1070/1070+, LQ-1170, LQ-1050+, LQ-1050, LQ-1010, LQ-1000, LQ-1500

  • Wide Colour - LQ-2550, LQ-2500

• FX Series

  • B/W - FX-880, FX-870, FX-850, FX-800, FX-85, FX-80+, FX-80

  • Wide B/W - FX-2180, FX-2170, FX-1180, FX-1170, FX-1050, FX-1000, EX-1000, FX-105, FX-100+, FX-100

• LX Series

  • B/W - LX-300, LX-810/850, LX-800, LX-80/86

  • Wide B/W - LX-1050+, LX-1050

• EX Series

  • B/W - EX-800

  • Wide B/W - EX-1000

• RX Series

  • B/W - RX-80

• MX Series

  • B/W - MX-85, MX-82, MX-80

Features:

• Many of the Epson ESC/P and ESC/P2 instructions are supported

• Graphics printing for 24-pin (LQ series) and 48-pin (DLQ series) modes supported, up to 360dpi

• Data can be output as Windows bitmap, PNG file, PostScript file, or sent to a Windows printer

• Some older non-conflicting IBM control codes are supported

Limitations:

• Printer output in black & white only

• Not all ESC/P commands are supported, like custom fonts

• Due to over-exact graphics emulation 360dpi printing from Windows (guest) graphics rasterising might not look as expected

• Country code setup and other configuration switches and buttons found on a real printer are not available, this may be overcome by sending special ESC/P commands to the printer before printing

DOSBox-X will first search for fonts in the FONTS subdirectory in the current working directory or the directory where dosbox-x.exe is located. If the fonts cannot be found, then it will search for the system fonts, as follows:

You are free to use suitable alternatives for these fonts, by copying them to the FONTS directory with file names mentioned in the first column of the above table.

Ocra (OCR-A) and Script (cursive) fonts may not be installed on your system. They are however rarely needed, and can typically be ignored. If you need them you may need to find those online.

DOSBox-X will first search for fonts in the ~/.config/dosbox-x/FONTS directory (or a FONTS subdirectory in the current working directory). If the fonts cannot be found, then it will search for the fonts in the /usr/share/fonts directory, as follows:

You are free to use suitable alternatives for these fonts, by copying them to the FONTS directory with file names mentioned in the first column of the above table.

Ocra (OCR-A) and Script (cursive) fonts may not be installed on your system. They are however rarely needed, and can typically be ignored. If you need them you may need to find those online.

DIR > LPT1:

It will cause a Windows print dialogue to appear on the host, and you can print to any printer configured on the host, including print to PDF.

Make sure your DOSBox-X config file contains the statements:

In DOSBox-X you can now simply redirect output to LPT1, or in DOS applications configure one of the Epson printers listed above. The printer dialogue will show up after a printer selection is made. If you want the printer selection to show up every time for printing to LPT1, please leave the "device" empty.

This assumes you PC still has a parallel printer port integrated on the system board, or has a legacy ISA parallel printer adapter. It reportedly will not work with either USB parallel printer adapters or PCI parallel printer port adapters.

Also note that the output is sent verbatim from the DOS application to the printer, without any filtering or conversion. Therefore, it is important that the printer can understand the printer control codes that are being sent by the application. In practice this means that this method is only really meant for situations where you have a legacy printer, or are perhaps only sending pure text.

Make sure your DOSBox-X config file contains the statements:

Alternatively you can try to set it up as follows, but this only works if your host is running Windows 9x, or with later Windows versions by installing "PortTalk". PortTalk is needed because direct port access is no longer permitted with more modern Windows versions. The last Windows version supported by PortTalk is Windows XP (32-bit).

In addition to relying entirely on the built-in printing methods, DOSBox-X can also work in combination with external third-party printing solutions like Printfil, DOSPRN, or WinPrint (open-source). Both Printfil and DOSPRN are shareware applications that specifically list DOSBox-X as supported for printing to any printer configured on the Windows host system.

According to its description, Printfil allows text-based applications to print to any Windows printer, including USB, network printers, fax modems and PDF writers, without any changes to the original applications. You can set your application to print to an ASCII file, or have Printfil capturing a parallel port (PRN: and from LPT1: to LPT9:) or serial port (from COM1: to COM9:), automatically redirecting your print jobs to any printer.

Printfil has implemented official support for integration with DOSBox-X since version 5.27. In addition to automatic printer handling via printing ports, it also supports additional features such as print preview, background image inclusion, text colorization, direct PDF and emailing. You can find the main features of Printfil in its feature list page. Once configured, there is no additional setup needed for printing support on the DOSBox-X side.

You can select the port to capture (e.g. LPT1) and the printer to use (e.g. Microsoft Print to PDF) from its configuration window. Printfil will automatically detect DOSBox-X if it is installed in the default path (C:\DOSBox-X), and ask whether to capture the selected port for DOSBox-X. If you answer Yes, then the specified printing port(s) will be automatically captured in future DOSBox-X sessions. Below is a screenshot of its configuration window.

First you need to give your Linux user access to the parallel printer port on the Linux host, otherwise you will get permission denied errors.

Replace "username" in the example below with your own Linux username. This will make your user a member of the "lp" group, which is a group that on most (all?) Linux distributions should have the necessary access to the parallel port.

Make sure your DOSBox-X config file contains the statements:

This has been confirmed to work. Alternatively you can try to set it up as follows:

But while using this later method seems to work on Windows, according to one report, it does not seem to work properly on Linux.

The output is sent verbatim to the printer, so the printer needs to be able to understand any control codes the DOS application sends.

In this example, it is assumed that you’re printing to a PostScript printer in your DOS application. This should give you the highest quality output, and depending on the application, you may even get colour by selecting a colour PostScript printer. The output is saved to a file on the host, to the directory specified with the captures= option, and when the file is closed (when no output is received for 2 seconds), the file will be opened using xdg-open such that it can be viewed and printed.

Similar to the Linux example above, but here the macOS Preview application is used to open the PostScript file, from where it can be viewed and printed.