Note: PrintCapture 3.x requires a new registration key. If you have an existing PrintCapture 2.x installation you are entitled to an upgrade to PrintCapture 3.x. Click here for more information.

General: The "Print_Capture.pcw" file location has been changed from PrintCapture's installation folder to PrintCapture's working folder. Too many customers were installing PrintCapture in an administrator's folder but using logon users without administrative privileges. As a result PrintCapture couldn't create the "Print_Capture.pcw" file.

Epson Processing: Added a new configuration setup control to force graphics data carriage-return and line-feed to be treated as a carriage-return or line-feed only. This control was needed to fix a problem with NovaTech D/3 and/or PC/3 software. Please see the online help for more information.

HPGL Processing: Added code to process text strings that contain backspace (\b) characters. Increased test buffer because some HPGL files were failing the test for determing if the raw data is HPGL data.

PCL Processing: Image resolution is now determined from soft font resolution, PCL image resolution, or user defined image resolution. Please see the Image Processing> Resolution online help for more information.

Progress Window: Added another status text control to display the End-of-Data Timeout countdown. This new control was needed because of the increase in the serial port's End-of-Data Timeout value.

Working Folder: Added a new "Make New Folder" button to the "Browse for Folder" dialog box when selecting a Working Folder for PrintCapture. The new dialog box also includes some new capabilities like resize capability. The new capabilities are used only when the Windows' system DLLs support them.

Serial Interface: Increased the End-of-Data Timeout values from 35.0 seconds to 360.0 seconds to meet a customer's requirements.

HPGL Processing: Fixed a problem processing a Character Plot (CP) command that contains no parameters.

HPGL Processing: there was so much trouble processing HPGL Output Commands ("Ox" commands) in real-time that we had to add a new control to Setup> Configuration> HPGL Processing> Special HPGL Command Processing named "Force Output Command Processing". More information about this control, and the logic behind its use, can be found in the online help.

HPGL Processing: Added a new "HPGL Pens" configuration page. This new configuration page took over the HPGL pen colors and added new controls so you can change the widths for each HPGL pen.

HPGL Processing: Added user notification when there is a configuration conflict between using a GPIB address of Listen Only (Setup> Configuration> GPIB Interface> GPIB Interface> Address) and processing HPGL Output Commands (Setup> Configuration> HPGL Processing> Special HPGL Command Processing> Process Output Commands). More information is available in the online help file.

Epson Processing: Added Reverse Paper Feed command processing for printers that print data in one color, backup the paper, print data in another color, backup the paper, etc. until the entire image has been printed. Added filters for some unknown Epson commands. Added processing for superscript and subscript characters. Added processing for upper range characters that are generally used for drawing text-mode graphics. Improved font creation.

General: Expanded message box messages and included message box location codes to make it easier to find the message box in the source code.

HPGL Processing: Fixed a bug in processing a Plot Relative command when it occurs before a Plot Absolute command. Fixed a bug in real-time processing of HPGL "Ox" commands that sometimes cause the "Ox" command to not be recognized. Let us know if your configuration is not processing the output commands correctly.

Installation: Added a dialog box to the installation to alert the user that the search for a previous installation could take a long time. The user has the option to skip the search.

HPGL Processing: Added real-time processing for all HPGL "Ox" output commands. This is our first attempt so there may still be work to be done. Let us know if your configuration is not processing the output commands correctly.

PCL Processing: Added detection and user notification for undefined PaintJet style colors. Added 'PCL Paintjet" to the conversion report message. Added "PCL PaintJet" to "Help/Last Conversion Info...".

PCL Processing: Fixed a bug in line-feed (LF) processing. An unusual data format caused some text data to be overlaid with some graphics data.

Pure Text Processing: Added capability to append pure Text data to a common text file. See the two new controls in Setup> Configuration> Text Processing.

HPGL Processing: Refined HPGL file detection. Some Text files were being mistakenly identified as HPGL files.

PCL Processing: Improved color processing for KCMY (Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) encoded raw data files. Fixed a bug in processing Seed-Row Encoded raw data files.

Modified configuration settings so both serial and GPIB interfaces can be set to "NONE". It used to be that one or the other of these interfaces had to be set to something other than "NONE". Now it is up to you (the user) to make sure that either a serial port or a GPIB port (but not both) is selected in order to receive data from your test equipment. This is to aid laptop users that don't have either a serial or GPIB interface installed on their machine.

PCL Processing: Added first attempt at decoding Seed-Row Encoded data. We had a very limited number of raw data files to work with and a very limited amount of data using Seed-Row Ecoding so there is probably still some work to do.

Pure Text Processing: Added some new controls to the "Text Processing" configuration page so pure text files can be converted to a .TXT file instead of a graphics image. PrintCapture acts more as a data logger than a conversion program in this mode.

HPGL Processing: Now all Pen Down (PD) commands result in a "dot" being plotted on the image, just like a real plotter would do.

Pure Text Processing: A New "Text Processing" configuration page has been added to Setup> Configuration to allow you to select a font specifically for text files. also added some controls so that you can select "Carriage-Return Implies Line-Feed" or "Line-Feed Implies Carriage-Return" to better process text files whose lines end in only a carriage-return or line-feed instead of carriage-return / line-feed combinations.

HPGL Processing: Added a configuration option to enable or disable an automatic pen up for Character Plot (CP) command processing. More information can be found in the online help. This modification was needed to process the cursor markers from an HP3577A Network Analyzer.

Filename Entry: Removed the '.' character from the filename filter. Now filenames can contain the '.' character.

Epson and PCL Processing: Fixed a bug that showed up when "Multiple Pages" was selected and the raw data file was incomplete or corrupted. This condition could cause PrintCapture to hang.

Serial Interface: Added more End-of-Data Processing timeout values. A customer needed about 30 seconds for his equipment.

Fixed a bug that showed up when "File/Open..." was used to open a binary file (e.g. BMP) when "Multiple Pages" was selected. A binary file can't have multiple pages.

Epson Processing: Added font underline processing. Added another type of 24-pin file processing. Added absolute horizontal position processing. Fixed a bug in condensed font processing. Fixed a bug in graphics data line spacing that showed up in very specific command sequences. Added support for raw data files that contained both 8-pin and 24-pin graphics data.

PCL Processing: Fixed a bug that sometimes caused PCL data to be misidentified as Epson data.

HPGL Processing: Added processing to display a dot on the image file when the command sequence "PD;PU;" (pen down/pen up) is detected.

GPIB Interface: Added a read-only control to the GPIB Interface configuration page that displays the company name from the GPIB-32.DLL installed. If the company name is not "National Instruments" then the GPIB interface is disabled.

PCL Processing: Improved soft font processing.

Text Processing: Added multiple page processing. Improved carriage-return and line feed processing.

PCL Processing: Added support for the Hewlett-Packard PaintJet Color Graphics Printer. Be sure to read the online help topic "PaintJet Data Processing" and the new "PaintJet Color Table.pdf" file.

Epson Processing: Increased a buffer size to detect Epson files with up to 25000 bytes of text before graphics data starts.

Epson Processing: Modified 24-pin printhead processing to give a more accurate rendering of the data. Increased a buffer size to detect Epson files with up to 16000 bytes of text before graphics data starts.

PCL processing: Almost completely rewritten to support soft fonts found in Humphrey Field Analyzers. Also processes more cursor position commands so you may see more white space in your images.

GPIB Interface: Fixed a bug that caused some Win2K systems to crash. This problem generally showed up when a Win2K system used an older National Instruments NI-488.2 device driver.

HPGL processing: Replaced the radio button font selection with a font selection dialog box. You can select a font but the font size and font style are not used in HPGL processing.

HPGL processing: Fixed a text processing bug that showed up in some very unique HPGL command structures. This bug kept you from adjusting the text size.

HPGL processing: Added HPGL "OE" output command processing.

Added a read-only edit box to the Store and Restore Configuration dialog boxes to display the name of the last configuration you saved or restored.

HPGL processing: Improved 'CS' command processing to handle multi-digit character set numbers. Also improved character mapping in some of the character sets.

TEXT processing: Added capability to map a character to another character using a user-defined translation file named "XlatText.txt". More information can be found in the online help under the heading "Translating Characters".

Epson processing: Fixed a bug found in processing some types of Epson color data.

Fixed an omission in the online help that indicated that multiple page processing was available only with Epson and HPGL data. Multiple page processing is also available with PCL data.

HPGL processing: Added processing for "UC" (user-defined character) command.

PCL processing: Added code to detect and process multiple pages within a PCL source file. See Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Image Processing> Multiple Pages.

Added code to generate conversion reports based on the last Epson, HPGL, or PCL conversion. The report is displayed from the Help menu.

Added *.hpg, *.pgl, *.plt filters to "file open" dialog boxes.

Changed the use of "Auto Close". It can now be used as a separate control instead of being tied to "Auto Print". See Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Image Processing> Auto Close and Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Print Processing> Auto Print.

Added a new "Auto Delete" control to Configuration> Image Processing so an image's data file can be automatically deleted at the same time the image is automatically closed (see "Auto Close").

Added a new "Print Title" control to Configuration> Image Processing> Print Processing to enable/disable printing the image's title (file name) when the image is printed.

Epson processing. Fixed a problem that sometimes showed up when processing raw data files with multiple pages.

HPGL processing. Fixed a bug in "SI;" command processing. Strengthened HPGL2 file detection.

Epson processing. Added "automatic image rotation" capability. See Setup> Configuration> Epson Processing> Image Rotation Clockwise.

PCL processing. Added "automatic image rotation" capability. See Setup> Configuration> PCL Processing> Image Rotation Clockwise.

HPGL processing. Added processing for the HPGL "OS" output command (see Setup> Confgiuration> HPGL Processing> Process Output Commands). The "OS" command requests the plotter status information from PrintCapture. This modification was added to support an HP8753B but the customer that requested it never returned our emails to verify that the modification worked. If you use PrintCapture with an HP8753B and HPGL would you let us know?

Improved Epson data detection. One customer has an Epson file with about 12000 text characters before the graphics data and the raw data from his equipment was not being recognized as Epson, HPGL, PCL or Text data.

Improved Epson, HPGL, and PCL data detection. In some cases the raw data from the test equipment was not being recognized as Epson, HPGL, PCL or Text data.

The improved Epson and PCL data detection now handles data from an HP54645D Mixed Signal Oscilloscope.

Added an I/O interface for National Instruments GPIB interfaces that use National Instruments' NI-488.2 device driver. NI's NI-488.2 device driver and GPIB interface must already be installed and working on your computer before it can be used by PrintCapture. See Setup> Configuration> GPIB Interface for more information.

Note: If you want to test your National Instruments GPIB interface you can download our National Instruments test program and try it out. This test program uses the same NI interface that we put in PrintCapture 3.x. The test program is not installed and does not modify your system at all. However, it does generate a report file that you can send back to us. Be sure to read the "readme.txt" file for more information.

Updated HPGL processing to handle HPGL data from a Tektronix 2712 Spectrum Analyzer.

Updated Epson processing to include Color0 (the background color) so one of our customers could change the background color of his Epson color images.

Updated Epson processing to handle graphics data that terminates with a carriage-return but no line-feed.

Updated support for multiple pages in an Epson data file. One of our customers sent us a raw data file with a little different data format.

Updated Epson processing to handle some 24-pin print head data files. The other 24-pin Epson files will be easy to add once we receive some sample files.

Updated Epson processing to handle the Seiko DPU-411 Thermal Printer data generated by Tektronix TDS oscilloscopes. We stumbled across this capability when we were looking at adding processing for Epson 9-pin data files. The DPU-411 uses a variation of the 9-pin data format.

Updated Epson processing to handle Epson color data. See Setup> Configuration> Epson Processing to see how you can change the colors that are used.

Updated Epson processing to support multiple pages in a single data file. See Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Image Processing> Multiple Pages.

Updated Epson processing to handle Master Select and Line Spacing commands. Generally, Line Spacing commands are used to move a printer's print head a fraction of the print head's physical size resulting in over-printing data. Before these commands were processed some Epson images would have roughly the same data in the vertical axis from one graphics line to the next.

Improved support for USB-to-serial converters. This includes a new control at Setup> Configuration> Serial Port> Flow Control to select "Automatic" or "Manual" flow control. See the FAQ I want to use a USB-to-serial converter. Will this work with PrintCapture? for more information on USB-to-serial converters.

Updated PCL processing to handle the illegal commands that were present in the data generated by an HP8510C Network Analyzer.

Updated PCL processing. Added the capability for the user to select the font used for processing text in a PCL file. This also required a new method of creating the image. See Setup> Configuration> PCL Processing> Select Font for more information.

Improved Epson processing to filter out an unknown command that was present in an Epson file that a user sent to us.

Changed "Epson Command Codes (*.ecc)" to "Epson Standard Codes (*.esc)" in all file filters for dialog boxes. "Epson Standard Codes" is the term used in the Epson documentation.

Fixed a bug in version 2.8.5 where under some conditions a PCL file could be mistaken for an Epson file. This resulted in a processing error message box that stated "This file contains data for a 48-pin print head...".

Added capability to process HPGL output command "OP;" and transmit a response back to the test equipment. See the online help on HPGL Processing for more information.

Improved Epson processing. Started processing Epson 'ESC J' and 'ESC \' commands and changed the way CR and LF are processed.

Added "Epson Command Codes (*.ecc)" to all file filters for dialog boxes.

Added XON/XOFF software flow control for serial handshaking. See Setup> Configuration> Serial Port> Handshake.

Improved HPGL text processing. Added HPGL "CS" command processing.

Improved PCL text processing and positioning. Added "ESC&a#C" and "ESC&a#R" command processing.

Increased the maximum serial port timeout from 12.0 seconds to 15.0 seconds. See Setup> Configuration> Serial Port> End-of-Data Processing. One of our customers has a real ssslllooowww piece of equipment and it takes a long time for it to crunch its data and send it to PrintCapture.

Increased the maximum serial port timeout from 10.0 seconds to 12.0 seconds. See Setup> Configuration> Serial Port> End-of-Data Processing.

Improved Epson text processing when text occurs on the same line as graphics data.

Updated installation program.

Improved HPGL text processing and positioning.

HPGL processing now detects over large images and automatically scales the image. A message box is displayed that notifies you (the user) of this operation.

Fixed a problem where, under some circumstances, you could have two windows of the same image file open at the same time.

Added a Frequently Asked Questions page to the online help file that closely duplicates the information in this web page.

Removed the "COMx detected a break condition" warning message that was reported with some test equipment. As it turns out break signals can be safely ignored.

Improved HPGL processing. Some HPGL files were not being recognized as HPGL files.

Improved HPGL processing. Data files with multiple scaling commands (IP and/or SC commands) are detected and a message box is displayed announcing that these files cannot be processed by PrintCapture.

Improved PCL processing. Some PCL files were not being processed correctly and this resulted in a "There was an error trying to set the file pointer" error message.

The HPGL data from some oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, or spectrum analyzers do not contain any scaling commands (IP or SC commands). Typically the data contains scaling commands to define the X and Y axis data limits. However, the data from some test equipment does not contain this information and instead relies on the default settings in PrintCapture to define the limits. The problem is that some test equipment expects the data limits to be portrait mode (Y axis is larger than X axis) and others expect the limits to be in landscape mode (X axis is larger than Y axis). PrintCapture now has a new control in its HPGL Processing dialog box (Setup> Configuration> HPGL Processing> Default Orientation) for you to set the default orientation.

For most test equipment the new control will have no effect on HPGL processing. But there is no way to tell without processing the HPGL data. If information appears to be missing in either the right or bottom of your image you may want to select the other mode (portrait or landscape) and try again.

The data from some customers included multiple pages, or plots, in their HPGL data. PrintCapture can now parse the data and create a separate image for each page. See Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Image Processing> Multiple Pages and the online help.

Added the capability to automatically close an image after it has been automatically printed. Some of our customers were using PrintCapture to automatically print a new image but they let PrintCapture run for hours in this mode without ever closing an image. Eventually PrintCapture used so much system memory that Windows began to noticeably slow down. See Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Print Processing> Auto Close and the online help.

You can now select BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, PNG, TIF, or TGA as your default image type. For example, if you have selected PCX as your default image type all images created will be saved as PCX files. A new status bar indicator has also been added to display your current selection. See Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Image Processing> Default Image Type.

Improved handling the condition of creating an image file that already exists. Now you have a choice of replacing the existing file or selecting a new file name.

Improved the creation of PCX and TIF files.

Improved handling of Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files. EPS files can be saved but they can't be loaded or displayed.

Fixed a problem saving images as BMP RLE images.

PrintCapture will now install and run on Windows Me. However, support for Windows Me is limited because we don't have access to a Windows Me machine for testing.

Added a new "Use User Sequence Number" control to Setup> Configuration> Image Processing. This control gives you the capability to set your own starting sequence number when auto-incrementing file names.

Windows XP is now supported. PrintCapture has only been tested on XP Professional - but it should install and run just fine on XP Home Edition.

Modified image printing so it uses as much of the paper as possible in both portrait and landscape mode. Also added 'automatic printing', print scaling, and printer orientation selection. See Setup> Configuration> Image Processing> Print Processing.

HPGL processing: Added some very basic processing for Label Origin (LO), Rotate Coordinate System (RO), and Tick Length (TL, XT, and YT) commands. The Tick Length commands are commands that some flatbed plotters (HP7470A, HP7550A, etc.) understand but are apparently obsolete commands.

PCL processing: Started processing text within a PCL file.

Epson Processing: Added more text command processing and improved the handling of Horizontal Tab (HT), Carriage Return (CR), and Line Feed (LF) characters for positioning both text and graphics data. Also changed the way some of the graphics data is displayed. Note: If you are using Epson data, the chances are good that your new images will be different than your old images.

Added a little more capability to PrintCapture's "pure" text file processing. All NUL (0x00) characters that are present in some printer outputs are now ignored.

Fixed some problems creating fonts and rendering text from HPGL commands. To aid in the font creation, new controls were added to the "HPGL Processing" configuration page (Setup> Configuration> HPGL Processing).

Added Epson ESC/P Control Code processing. A new "Epson Processing" tab was added to Setup> Configuration to support font selection and automatic image resizing.

Added "Store Configuration..." and "Restore Configuration..." menu items to the "Setup" menu. Use these dialog boxes to store, and restore, configurations for your test equipment. For example, if you use both a Tek 430A 'scope and an HP8714B RF Network Analyzer, you can save a configuration named "Tek 430A" and another one named "HP 8714B". When you need to switch back and forth between the two, just restore its configuration. Now there is no need to remember the best settings for your test equipment.

Improved color PCL processing.

Added a "PCL Processing" tab to Setup> Configuration to support PCL color selection and automatic PCL resizing.

Added a "Resize Image..." dialog box to both the "Edit" menu and the popup context menu.

Improved PCL command processing and added limited color PCL processing.

The HPGL/2 command processing is pretty much complete. There are a few HPGL/2 commands that aren't implemented because they make no sense when creating a bitmap.

PrintCapture now processes the output from Windows NT- and Windows 2000-based test instruments when they are printed using one of Hewlett-Packard's HPGL/2 plotter drivers (Hewlett-Packard HP-GL/2 or HP7550 Plus). Windows 95 and Windows 98 don't include the HPGL/2 plotter drivers - they include HPGL plotter drivers. See PrintCapture's limitations for more information.

Fixed a bug that kept PCL files from being recognized. This was a bug that slipped into version 2.1.1 while we were adding more HPGL command processing.

Added an 8th color pen for HPGL plots. Some test instruments refer to 8 pens (0-7) and some instruments refer to 9 pens (0-8). Pen 0 is always considered 'white' (no color), so we added another pen to be able to process up to 8 different color pens.

Greatly improved HPGL plot command processing. PrintCapture does a good job of processing the output from Windows 95- and Windows 98-based test instruments when they are printed using one of Hewlett-Packard's HPGL plotter drivers (HP7470A, HP7475A, HP7550A, HP7580A, HP7580B, HP7585A, HP7585B, or HP7586B). Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP don't include the HPGL plotter drivers - they include HPGL/2 plotter drivers. See PrintCapture's limitations for more information.

Improved HPGL scaling. The image height and width can now be scaled up or down. The image's aspect ratio can also be maintained during scaling.

Added capability to trim the white space from all four edges of an image to decrease the image's size.

First version released.

Designed primarily to interface with a CRT-based logic analyzer, spectrum analyzer, or digital oscilloscope. It has limited PCL and HPGL command processing.