>VFP8 SP1
>
>There have been many threads on this issue as well as report to ascii and printing reports using ?? and ??? and @...say etc. Pardon me for creating another one!
>
>We are in the process of switching all of our ??? and @...say reports over to VFP reports still and have run into some issues with customers who use OKIDATA 320 Microline printers and OKIDATA 320 Turbos. The reports print fine but they print extremely slow because all of the VFP reports print in graphics mode on the Okidatas. We have tried every Okidata as well as every Windows printer driver. We have also tried REPORT FORM TO ascii and there seems to be a problem with a loss of data and truncated fields. We have tried using a generic/text printer driver and it doesn't always align the fields correctly on the form. Modifying the reports for that driver is out of the question because many of our customers use the HP laserjets or GDI printers as well. Right now we have duplicate copies of the same report for different printers and it is a bear to maintain when we have so many reports. We have specific forms that are controlled by state guidelines and since our software is used in
>all 50 states we have potentially nearly a thousand reports to eventually support. Our goal (having hundreds of reports to maintain and hundreds of customers) is to have only one copy of each report in vfp format created using the report generator but to somehow allow it to print in draft mode on the Okidatas so that they print faster for those customers and preventing the need for maintaining duplicate copies of the same reports for different printers. Our reports tend to change on an annual basis (or more frequently) so we do not want to have to modify duplicates of all reports on a regular basis.

The few times I've printed to dot matrix printers I've had no problem using the Generic/Text Only driver.

One thing you might check: the Oki printers may be set to print in NLQ when fed straight ASCII. It should be possible to configure them to print in draft when fed straight ASCII. IIRC you use some sort of button combination to "save" your current settings as the default - I believe these printers do have a small amount of EEPROM/Flash RAM or whatever. Check your printer manuals for details.