There's a bit of a snag with Bochs - it keeps crashing and closing when trying to copy the screen, giving only one successful attempt each time. Even so, it'll still be the quickest way to make a printable version of the manual.
Karlosoft wrote:
I have an old dot-matrix printer still working that I used for some debugging aims
I have already written a driver for this in one of my old os, It would be enjoying to do the same again
I don't want you to get diverted into working on my OS instead of your own, but if you are keen to give it a go purely in the course of experimenting with programming with my indexed machine code programming system, I won't try to stop you. I don't know how much work is involved in using a parallel port, but if you need to use interrupts with them there should be a free location in the existing IDT which can simply be linked (using the indexing system) to a new interrupt routine which can be placed in front of "eoc".
If you add code to a code cell (such as the interrupts module), you can save the modified cell by using the F2 menu and selecting the file to be saved - no safety net is provided, so if you highlight an entry and press Return it will instantly save it. If you add code to a Machine Editor cell, you must save that modified cell either by using S or Shift+S (depending on which version of Machine Editor you're using to write the code - it's probably best to create most of the code inside the Mach.Ed1 module just in front of its "eoc" and use the blue version of Machine Editor to write all the code - this is far from ideal, but the linking system currently only works fully automatically with the three main OS modules).
When it comes to printing tx+ format files, they are essentially ASCII text files, but with a few embedded codings which will need to be jumped over. The value 0 is used instead of 32 (20h) for spaces at the end of lines, so every time you find either a 0 or 13 in the file (other than in embedded codings) you can send both a 13 and a 10 to the printer. The tabs aren't proper tabs yet, so they can simply be converted into five spaces.
Anyway, it's entirely up to you whether you really want to try doing it, but if you seriously do want to put time into this I'll be happy to help provide any information you require to make up for any missing documentation, though we'll obviously need to communicate by e-mail rather than annoying everyone by doing it here. Feel free to drop the idea at any time too, because there's absolutely no pressure on you to continue if you start - I don't want you thinking that once you've taken up some of my time you have to keep going no matter what. Your priority must be your own OS, just as mine must be my A.I. work.
[Edit: copying the manual would be best done by copying a whole DOS disk with a single large dummy file on it into memory, then copying the tx+ file(s) in on top of part of the dummy file (within the copy of the disk in memory), and then simply copying the whole thing back to disk. It will then be easy to import it into Notepad and the editing job will be as simple as selecting a single block of text out of it. I'd better write a routine to turn it into a pure txt file first though so that the 0s are turned into 32s. The biggest advantage of doing it this way is that it'll then be extremely easy to repeat the process every time the manual changes. Eventually I'll get round to supporting FAT12 directly and the problem will no longer exist.]
[Edit 2: transfer done - first part of manual now available as Open Office document]