Thread: Printers and Portability

  1. #1
    Master of Puppets rwmarsh's Avatar
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    Printers and Portability

    I was wondering if there was a good portable way to send information to a printer? Using fstreams will not work with my setup (windows xp and an ink jet printer) and the only other way I know of is with windows api's which (correct me if I am wrong) will only work on a windows OS.

    I have been playing with pdCurses and I like it so far. I would like to start using it on a regular basis but I have not seen anything on printer functions for it and I would hate to have to #include <windows.h> just so that I can send text to the printer.
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  2. #2
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Assuming you have a printer connected to the LPT1 port, you create an ofstream object and open lpt1.
    Code:
    ofstream printer("lpt1");
    EDIT: Oh... you said portable... I'm not sure if lpt1 is recognized as a printer port under other systems. Most probably not.
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  3. #3
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    > I was wondering if there was a good portable way to send information to a printer?
    There is no standard device name for a printer, nor is there a standard way of finding out if you've even got a printer.
    Not to mention the vast variety of printers and printer languages (PCL, Postscript, ... )
    If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
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  4. #4
    Cat without Hat CornedBee's Avatar
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    Try one of the cross-platform UI frameworks like Qt, GTK+ or wxWidgets. They ought to provide printing.
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  5. #5
    Hardware Engineer
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    FYI - Some printers have a special secret protocol that requires you to use the Windows driver (and WinAPI). I have a cheap Canon ink jet, and it doesn't respond if you simply it send ASCII. It won't work with DOS applications at all.

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