I'm building a new web-based product. The problem is that many clients have specific printers to print specific documents. Just think reports,barcodes,invoices etc. All on a special printer with the right paper etc...
Usually when printing from the web you cannot make the software choose a printer or change the settings. However it's just that that I want to do.
I want to print without a dialog. And enter the printer + settings with my software
The only solution I know of now is the commercial version of acrobat that has some javascript printing support..
Does anyone know of any other alternatives ?
Thanks in advance !
small-medium business
No heavy installion but common stuff is ok
ie. flash/silverlight/acrobat/whatever is possible
I generate what is necessary for printing (PDF/Tiff etc)
Who are your customers -- enterprises or SOHO? Are you generating PDFs? Or, raw tiffs? If you are generating PDFs there is something called a JDF file where you can specify the print settings to your heart's content. The flip side is the device needs to be capable of understanding JDFs. You can then attach the JDF with the PDF as a mime package. If you are generating tiffs, I think there isn't much need of printer settings except for the correct device profile(s) to be installed.
Because of security reasons, you cannot control that from within the browser.
If I where in your shoes, I'd create a small program for my clients to install, registering a specific file extension to this program and creating files in this format on the website, and have the program do the printing for me.
Your easy choices are either PDF or Microsoft's Reporting/Report Viewer
Related
I want to write a web app that can process a users presentation which when submitted, gets sent to their local system printers - one part of the order will go to B&W laser printer and another part goes to another printer for another process.
Ideally, this will be able to run on any of the major systems - Linux, OSX or Windows.
It could be a packaged Chrome or Firefox app or extension, but I can't tell if there is sufficient access to the system printers. (I can see all the printers available to my current chrome installation - but are they available to an extension?). I can't see the code in any demos or libraries.
I've seen reference to NPAPI, but I can't tell if that's what I need either - if so would I need to write an app for each of the major platforms or each kind of printer?
In Firefox it is possible to print from an extension. Using only javascript, that is (you're free to mess about with C++ if you like).
Extensions are essentially the browser: Everything the browser can do, an extension can, too.
There is however not much documentation about using the printer. To be precise, there is none that I'm aware of. However, the browser is open source, and the UI is mostly Javascript, so you can just read the code.
printUtils.js would be a good starting point to check out how this might work. Also there is a component implementing nsIPrinterEnumerator. See the firefox-addon info section for a collection of "Getting started" and documentation resources about add-on development in general.
I don't think the Chrome extension API provides ways to control printing the way you'd need.
The NPAPI plugin API does not provide enough control over printing. You just basically get a buffer to draw into, but no way to control printing setting or initiate printing yourself. You could cheat of course, and have your plugin directly print something via OS bypassing the browser, like e.g. those PDF readers do. However, it should be noted that NPAPI plugins are the past... Don't develop new ones, if possible.
I would like to know if the following idea is possible/makes sense?
Create a virtual printer (like "PDF Printer" that any application with printing capabilities can see in the printers list) that doesn't print to paper or file, but simply inserts the document "being printed" in the document management system (DMS) I developed. Imagine from MSWord i choose "MyPrinter" and on "print" my custom forms appear and let the user choose where to save the doc file inside my DMS, letting the user set some parameters (related to my DMS).
So after these "forms" I have all the data needed to insert the file in the DMS.
I am aware this is somehow "in the tricks domain" but it is the only choice to integrate my app with some legacy software (with printing capability) that cannot be repalced.
I'd like to have a comment on this.
Creating a virtual printer is a very technical task. You will have to write a device driver, which is not directly possible with Delphi (even if there are some code in the Net).
There are several components able to do this: they consist in an already developed printer driver, with some general API to be called from other languages, including Delphi.
I found out that EMFPrinterPilot from ColorPilot could be a good start. Your Delphi application may be able to retrieve the Text (for indexing), PDF (for archiving) and even EMF (for display / reprint).
My first application I have developed in RoR is for some Kiosk Touchscreen PCs used in our stock. When the stock worker picked up some material he enters the quantity in a Form.
Now I want to print a label containing: customer name, material description, quantity, and a barcode on our Zebra printer.
How would I do that from a Ruby on Rails Application ?
Sending directly the control chars needed for ZPL (Zebra Printer Language) from the controller ? ( not very comfortable )
Create a view in HTML send it to the client, and the client has to print it. ( not very confortable and error prone, as the stock worker has to do additional steps, may choose the wrong printer or maybe don't print the label at all )
Create a pdf document from the controller and send it to the printer from the server ( oh, no the printer does not understand pdf, so I have to control a pdf reader to do the printing ?? That wouldn't be very fast as it will send the label as a graphic image to the printer
Create a gem which will hide all the logic needed for printing ? ( Are there any gems which already do this ? )
I would appreciate every comment.
Thanks
Klaus
I would send the raw ZPL to the printer. You can use a tool like Bartender (I would suggest installing Bartender Only from that link. You can basically design your label in this tool. After you've designed your label you would download the bartender printer drivers for your zebra printer and set up a dummy printer with these drivers and print this label you designed to a file. This will give you the raw zpl. From this you can basically substitute all the dynamic data into the zpl file you printed in the previous step and send this directly to the printer via serial, tcp/ip or usb.
Edit: I found a much better solution as I continued to dig on this. This is pretty significantly edited down to focus on the Java applet solution I ended up using.
Basically, you will generate the label as raw ZPL text. You then need to get that plain text to the printer, which will generate the label.
If your server can access the printer's IP address, you can copy the ZPL to the printer directly from the server process. If it's a remote web app, you need to get the client to send the ZPL for you. Browser sandboxing makes this hard to pull off - drivers want to helpfully get in the way. There are a few options; the most common is to use a small Java or Flash applet to do the actual copying. If you can get the specific web browser your users are using to print to a plain text printer without adding anything, you could use local printing, but generally the most robust approach is to use a helper Java applet.
The Java applet I use for this is jZebra: http://code.google.com/p/jzebra/
It's a very clean & straightforward approach, look at the sample HTML in the download package and a few lines of code print the label. I just edited down the sample and am planning to use it as my production code popup.. it's really that straightforward.
Two caveats with this approach:
Your users must have the JRE installed
jZebra finds the Zebra printer by printer name. There are very specific guides (they have detailed instructions for Mac, Windows, and Linux setup) for what you need to do - but it's well documented and you just have to have your users follow the instructions. Once it's set up correctly it works great.
More simple solution, and I believe better as well, Usually most of browser and machines has PDF viewer installed. So just create labels as PDF documents and sent it to browser.
We have implemented label printing using Zebra printer in ROR following way.
Create exact format label pages in html.
Convert the html to pdf using wickedPDF.
Usually labels contains barcodes as well.
So overall solution would be,
Create barcodes using barbie gem.
Create html using barcodes and your actuall data that needs to go on label.
Convert html view to PDF.
Sounds like a job for a ruby C extension. Perhaps one that also wraps something like gnu barcode http://www.gnu.org/software/barcode/ library and some other open standard for the zebra printer, if one exists? I once did a rails app that made coupons and made heavy use of gnu barcode, but I did simple shell command to interface to it.
I am re-engineering a windows application to be ported to web. One area that has been worrying is 'printing'.
The application is data intensive and complex reports need to be generated. The erstwhile windows application takes advantage of printer APIs and extends sophisticated control to the users. It supports functions like page break, avoiding printing on printed parts of the sheet (like letterhead), choice of layouts and orientation, etc. Please note that these setting are not done only while printing, they are part of report definition sometimes.
From what I know, we cannot have this kind of control while printing web pages. I am in a process of identifying options at my disposal. While I prefer to first look into something that will help me print from raw web pages, following are other thoughts:
Since reports can also be exported to .xls & .pdf versions, let user download one and print directly. This however limits my solution to the area of application that have export feature.
Use Silverlight (4.0) for report layout definition and print. I think Silverlight 4.0 (in beta right now) provides adequate control over the printer. I have so far been avoiding the need of any RIA plugin.
Meticulously generate reports on web with fixed dimensions. I am not sure how far this will go.
Please share practices that can be applied easily in my scenario.
For reporting in the past on the web, using .NET, I like to generate PDF, Excel, Word or CSV files. I really like iTextSharp which allows for creating of PDF's.
Word can accept HTML, so that is usually quote easy. For more control you can get into the Word interops http://nishantrana.wordpress.com/2007/11/03/creating-word-document-using-c/, but they left me frustrated. Not for implementation, but I felt the clean up was poor.
CSV are great for raw data dumps and that is it.
For HTML, you can get nice control using a style sheet targeted to print media. There are just certain things you cannot control, like browser header and footer.
Flash also has better print controls than plain HTML, though you might not know it since these features are rarely used by flash developers. Almost everyone should have Flash installed these days, so it's not like Silverlight where there's a good chance of someone needing to install a plugin (doubly so for a beta version). I am not sure how the Flash printer APIs compare to Silverlight's printer APIs and if they give you the level of control you need, but their documentation is public so you can look into it.
Also I think exporting to PDF is a good idea. I don't see why you can't extend this to cover all places that would need to print a report. Basically instead of printing directly from the windows app running on their desktop, the same exact code runs on your server and generates a PDF that they can then print themselves.
I don't think you're going to have much luck trying to do it with raw HTML unfortunately. For one of our clients, we went with the "generate PDF" route and it worked out quite well. PDFs have the additional advantage that you don't have to print them out: you can just email them to the boss/accountant/whatever saving a bit of paper.
PDF is the way to go, if you want absolute control over printed output. As bonus, you can also provide the option to download PDFs in your application.
With HTML, you are at the mercy of user's browser settings for page size, margin and how page breaks will be handled.
I need to add printing capabilities to an app and I have been looking around for information about printing. Logical/physical sizes, dpi, font scaling, etc, lots to digest since I never programmed printing into any app before.
Are there any sites that would offer a primer on the topics of page sizes, margins and all the other elements required to understand printing on Windows? I've been looking around for a while but what I find is either cryptic or years old...
I've been playing around with TPrinter, but I would like to build solid printing functionalities and understand what I'm doing better.
Using a report solution is not an option, even though I'm sure it would provide better results much sooner.
Two links to get you started:
Printing with TPrinter
Printing via the TPrinter Canvas
I think that you are looking too lowlevel.
Try looking at the build reporting tools (Rave or whatever is in your product).
Personally i am using a product called Report Builder from Digital Metaphors.
But if you want to do the lowlevel stuff lot og good information can be found at efg's computer lab - printing
Well, I have done things a variety of ways in the past, including the "hard way" with TPrinter. In fact, I recently had to do that again to run a special inventory label printer.
On the other hand, sometimes you are better off taking work others have done and using it for your benefit. I agree that ReportSmith isn't so great, and also it's Delphi (and Windows) specific. Using Excel or Word has those limitations, plus the fact that the user has to actually have them installed.
One thing I have done to make printing easy for some simple applications is just to generate an HTML file and call the user's web browser, then they can print it. HTML tables can be created relatively easily for numerical data, and you can include photos, etc. as well. This works well for some applications, and works on every platform where a web browser is installed. The downside, of course, is that HTML isn't the most precise layout language.
The version of Delphi you´re using is important. A number of Delphis came with print engines like ReportSmith (ugh). Another option thinking laterally is to use MS Word as a print engine. I´ve hooked into instances of Word & Excel before & utilised their functionality. As to raw printing using TPrinter or the print method of TForm you´d have to be pretty desperate. I seem to recall the Pacheo / Texeira Delphi books coming with a pretty good overview so you might want to see if you can find a copy of that somewhere.