Print DOS Code Page in Windows

Can I print characters in my DOS Code Page ?

Printfil can print any character which is mapped into the chosen Windows font, including latin characters (A,B,C, ...) accented letters (à, è, é, ..., used in specific languages), box-drawing chacters (╔, ═, ..., used to "draw" frames and boxes in character mode), symbols (Æ, Ø, €, ...) and even special glyphs included in specialized fonts (barcodes for example).

There is no need to "Select a Code Page" in Printfil because the Windows fonts already provides all what's needed to print any character produced by your source application. You can easily see this by choosing, for example, "Symbol" rather than "Courier New" in the Printfil's configuration dialog.

In addition, Printfil can automatically call the Windows OEM (DOS) to Ansi (Windows) conversion of the characters, so that an unsupported DOS OEM character in the currently selected font can be automatically rendered by using the most similar one in the currently selected Windows Ansi codepage.

Tip: If your own legacy program is using a different codepage than the Windows internal OEM code page, then the Windows OEM-to-Ansi charset conversion may not work properly for some accented letters and/or other national characters.

In this case, Printfil 5.7 and newer provides a button at Configuration -> Standard to change the internal Windows OEM Code Page, making it matching your own source program.

So, for printing non-latin characters with Printfil you only need a standard True Type Windows font which includes them, in the Ansi or OEM codepage.

In most cases, the standard Windows "Courier New" font in Ansi conversion can render all the glyps you need, but using a PC8 font may better reflect the "old DOS behaviour".

Although there are many PC8 fonts out there, on request of our Customers we designed the "aSwIt Mono xxx" font family to provide a better "modern look" to your legacy print jobs. They're all PC8 fonts to be used in OEM conversion and include box-drawing characters, when needed. Per each font is distributed even the ND variant (for example "aSwIt Mono 437 ND") that differs from the standard version (for example "aSwIt Mono 437") because:

The Zero character does not have the internal dot (some customers didn't like the dots, even if this makes more difficult recognizing which are the Zeroes and which are the Oh)
The Ascii Code 128 contains the Euro symbol (it wasn't present in the DOS age, but might be useful having it at a hand even on those codepages)

All the aSwIt Mono xxx Windows fonts listed in the table below are already included in the current Printfil version. If some of these fonts are not already installed in your machine, please upgrade your Printfil copy.

Language	Font	Conversion	Description
Arabic	aSwIt Mono 864	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 864 (Arabic)
Canadian French	aSwIt Mono 863	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 863 (Canadian-French) used mainly in Canada
Central European	Courier New CE	Ansi / OEM	Windows True Type font by Microsoft. Suitable for Central European languages (Code Page 852): Czech, Hungarian, Slovenian, ...
	aSwIt Mono 852	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 852 (Central European) : Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak
	aSwIt Mono Yuscii	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. emulating the YUSCII 7-bit Latin character encoding (ISO-IR-141, ISO 646-YU) for the Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian languages
Greek	Courier New Greek	Ansi / OEM	Windows True Type font by Microsoft. Suitable for the Greek language
Hebrew	aSwIt Mono 8859-8	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in both the ISO Code Page 8859-8 (Hebrew Latin) and the DOS codepage 862 (partially) for the Hebrew language
	aSwIt Mono 862	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing strictly the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 862 (Hebrew)
	Heblatin	Ansi / OEM	Windows True Type font by Jet Print Solutions Ltd containing the Hebrew glyphs for the DOS OEM Code Page 862 and ISO 8859-8
Icelandic	aSwIt Mono 861	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the Code Page 861 DOS (Icelandic) used mainly in Iceland
Nordic languages	aSwIt Mono 865	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS Code Page 865 (Nordic Languages) like Danish and Norwegian
Portuguese	aSwIt Mono 860	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 860 (Portuguese)
Russian	aSwIt Mono 866	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 866 (Russian)
Turkish	Courier New TUR	Ansi / OEM	Windows True Type font by Microsoft. Suitable for the Turkish language
Western European	aSwIt Mono 850	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 850 (Western European) spoken in countries like: Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Finland
Western languages	aSwIt Mono 437	OEM	Windows True Type PC8 font by aSwIt s.r.l. containing the glyps in the DOS OEM Code Page 437 (IBM US) widely adopted as standard even outside U.S.A. and Canada

Please note that the table above is not complete and contains only some examples. You might use other Windows fonts for the same languages or for other languages/purposes.