how to manipulate printer from program

[rich110]

Hi,

Our application has to print various paper size and in landscape mode. We had made several 'printers' for just 1 physical printer on each workstation. As the no of printers grows it just gets out of hand. Is there any way to manipulate the printer settings thru the program ( or utilities provided by 3rd parties ) just for 1 print job (not thru interactive prompts like Excel or Words)?

Tks for helping

 

[JRB-Bldr]

You can utilize the specific printer's Printer Command Language (PCL) and control these parameters.

Look on the new to find a listing of your printer's PCL or Programmer's Reference. That should give you the character strings required to "communicate" with the printer.

From there it depends on how you are sending your Reports to the printer.

* --- Old Hard-code style ---
@ Row, Col SAY

* --- Alternate Old Hard-code style ---
? Printout Line

* --- FP's Report ---
REPORT FORM MyReport NOCONSOLE TO PRINTER

With the 2 hard-code styles you send the character strings at the appropriate time as additional output lines.

With the Report form approach you create a Text Box on the report and output the character string there.

Good Luck,


JRB-Bldr
VisionQuest Consulting
Business Analyst & CIO Consulting Services
CIOServices@yahoo.com

 

[rich110]

Hi,

Tks for the tip. But would they work as we are on window platform? I have done that in DOS days but now.....

 

[dbMark]

Which FoxPro version do you use? If you are using FoxPro version 2.6a for DOS or earlier, then you are not using the Windows installed printers anway, as your DOS-based FoxPro program does it all.

Excel, Word, and other Windows programs are designed to use the installed printer drivers, but DOS programs are largely ignorant of those aspects of Windows. Running a DOS program on a Windows computer works okay, just those DOS programs cannot do some of the "newer" stuff done by Windows such as printing to Windows installed printer drivers and USB-connected printers.