Printing- Filters

QNX USERS QNX6 - OS
1

Hi,

I would like to have a few inputs on the following requirement
My application has to support printing the data irrespective of the type of printer attached. The end user can connect any kind of printer to the target board.

Is there any printer language, by which the data can be printed in any kind of printer(canon, Hp, Epson etc)?

Is there any way data can be printed irrespective of the type of printer connected to it?

BY using filiters phs-to-bjc, phs-to-ps, phs-to-pcl etc, phs file can be converted into a specific printer format but how it can be used if the type of printer is unknown?

Thanks in advance,
Logesh

2

The closest you can come to this is plain ASCII text. This will work on almost any printer except for Postscript and pure digital dot printers. The only example of the latter I’ve ever seen is a label printer, which is probably not a problem for you. To deal with Postscript you could wrap the text in a minimal Postscript program, however that program would show up on other printers. You may also find that there are form feed issues to deal with that require you to flush blank sheets.

3

Hi,

Thanks for your inputs.

But my requirement is to create a phs file & print the same.
The phs file may contain graph, tables etc devloped using photon.

Thanks,
Logesh

4

This is not remotely possible. You might just as well say that you want the the user to be able to plug in any printer to your computer’s USB port and have it work, even if the printer is parallel, serial, firewire, or wireless. You will have to create a way for the user to configure their printer. This is true on any OS.

5

Logesh, you migh be able to get away with it if the printers are all usb as I thing you can know which model of printer it is and upon connection setup the proper configuration. If it’s not USB I do not thing it’s possible to autodetect the model of printer.

6

There are protocols for detecting some kinds of parallel port printers, eg. HP, but I don’t think that there is a standard.

7

Thank you for your valuable comments:-)

How could i find what are the printer languages(eg pcl, ps) supported by the printer connected to the system?

Regards,
Logesh

8

You can’t, that is specific to each model, many models in fact support more then one language. In order to query the language, some soft of standard language would need to be implemented :wink: To my knowledge no such thing exists. It would also imply that printers have bidirectional communication and some don’t…