Re: Printing in GTK+

[Todd Fisher <taf2 lehigh edu>]

would printing to a spooler be cross platform?  I mean would this process
you describe be similar if I wanted to print in win32 as it is in Linux?

thanks,
todd

Roger Leigh wrote:

> "Carl B. Constantine" <duckwing duckwing ca> writes:
>
>  
>
> > I have some data I want to print out in my application. How do I do it?
> > To make things a little different, I *might* print to one of those POS
> > type printers (USB) not a regular printer.
> >
> > Pointers? Which classes do I need to use?
> >    
>
> GTK+ itself doesn't currently offer any printing support, so the
> question doesn't really involve GTK+ directly.  You need to either
>
> 1) Open the printer device (e.g. /dev/usb/lp0) and write data to it.
> 2) Open a pipe to the printer spooler (e.g. lpr -P queuename)
>   and then write the job data and close the connection.
>
> By a POS printer, I take that to mean a 40 col receipt printer sort of
> thing.  These are basic devices which are basically ASCII thermal
> printers plus some additional control codes and possibly some extra
> bitmap raster graphics mode.  For these you just send the control
> codes inline with the text you're printing to either (1) or (2) above.
> Your program is entirely responsible for the formatting, layout and
> cutting etc.
>
>
> For the work I do, I send jobs to a receipt printer via CUPS.  After
> completion of a transaction, the receipt gets printed after a barely
> noticeable delay (< 0.5s).
>
>
> Your best bet is to use a spooler.  This also makes networked
> operation totally transparent, and is far more flexible.  You can use
> libcups, lpc or lpstat etc. to get a list of all available printers if
> the user needs to choose one.
>
>
> Regards,
> Roger
>
>