HP Host Based Printers

[jeff lawson]

Hello all...I may be a bit behind the time, but I just encountered an interesting issue with new HP "Host Based" printers and jobs spooled out of jBASE.  I thought I would run some stuff by everyone and see what kind of feedback I get...

Environment:

Windows/jBASE 3.4.x
jBASE spooler and formqueues setup with PROG lp

Background:

On HP "Host Based" printers (1500,2600N,3500,3550,1010,1012,1015,1160...and more to come) jobs spooled direclty from DOS based/legacy type applications (PRINT, lp, etc) are of "RAW" datatype and hang in the spooler in a "printing" status.  These jobs are of datatype IMF, and the IMF Print Processor for the printers above can not handle printing them.

With normal PCL6 driven HP Printers and drivers, these jobs are of type "RAW" and the print processor is WINPrint. 

According to my conversations with HP Support, jobs that are sent to these new generation "host based" printers through DOS and such are a known limitation and will not work.  The printers do not come with basic PCL6 driver compatibility and cannot be connected and used with Standard TCP/IP port and Generic/Text Only drivers either.

Question:

Has anyone ran into this and looked at a different way to print with jBASE formqueues which bypasses the "DOS" print job incompatibility that HP is claiming?  Are there other useful connect commands beside PROG lp that people have found successfull within Windows/jBASE 3.4.x?

Jeff

[Mark Hogden]

Someone at jBase(Dan K?) provided us with 'wlp' a no frills vb project that demonstrates how to handle GDI(win) printers. We have since enhanced it to do all sorts of things, but it's dependent (somewhat) on our application code.

 

I think there may be folks lurking in the shadows of this group that have commercial products to handle GDI printers, seems to me it was a topic on comp.database.pick not too long ago.

 

Mark

---

From: jB...@googlegroups.com [mailto:jB...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of jeff lawson
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 3:38 PM
To: jb...@googlegroups.com
Subject: HP Host Based Printers

[Nick Lukin]

Jeff,

I would suggest to have a look at PritWizard from Rasmusen Software,
www.anzio.com , which will solve all your problems with GDI (WinPrint)
printers. PW will also help in making all your printout formats be
independent of the printer types use may want to use. The software
costs some money, though you can always measure your gains you get by
using it.

They offer free download with 60-day trial.

My two roubles :)

Nick

[T.Turkington]

May I add that this solution (wlp) basically worked by having the routine:

 

1.  Read stdin()

2.  Port the stdin input text to a VB Printer object,  setting Printer.Font = Courier et al

 

You have to experiment a little with Font to get it right, and may need to add a jspform item to define the Page Width/Depth...

 

Notably also, because this uses the VB/Windows Printer object you need to address the printer using its "Name" versus it's "share name" and my experience was that any 'network' printers needed to be defined for the user running jspprint daemons before the process could actually address the printer using "Name" (i.e. had to logon with the daemon's user id and had to "Add" printer via Settings -> Printers and Faxes -> Add Printers...

 

Tom