Re: Print Buttons in New Era

All I know about this is that regular printer output in Windows goes to the printer driver. This driver understands its own language to print all kinds of stuff (fonts, pictures ++) on a page at a time. There is however a way via Windows API calls to set printer output to bypass the printer driver and go directly to the printer. You'll have to find out which calls and how to use them in NewEra from someone. Please post back when you find out. We do the same thing in our 4GL programs, and there are significant benefits to bypassing the printer driver in this way for some types of applications. Another issue is that Informix realy ought to expand the functionallity of the print statement in reports to understand fonts (Windows fonts), cursor positioning and other things that would make it possible to print not only plain text via the Windows printer drivers. That would make up a very good report writing functionallity for many purposes. A reportwriter like ViewPoint Pro (or rather something better that gets integrated with NewEra) isn't allways the right answer. Reporting with full program controll like with the report function is often very desirable. sholmes@pacificnet.net wrote: : At our user group meeting, recently, we saw a demonstration of a :4gl to New Era migration utility. Diskettes of a version were distributed :to attendees. The diskettes also contained some sample code. One of :the samples is a print button which brings up a screen to allow the user :to select the printer, enter a print range, print to file, etc. The :button doesn't actually do anything with the choices except display :a screenful of the resulting data. Now, what I need is an object to :send this stuff to to print my New Era reports (non-View Point Pro). : I'd posted a couple of months ago that I was unable to send a report :to a printer AND include ASCII strings in the report. If I send such a :report to a file, the file looks perfect. When I send the report to the :printer, the ASCII strings are printed as literal characters. We've been :using these reports, in 4gl, for several years and we would like to :continue to use them with our New Era version. Until this problem is :solved, the New Era version sits on the shelf and as embarrassing as it :may sound, I'm experimenting with Access to handle at least part of this :application. : So, if anyone can tell me how to use a "START REPORT ... TO PRINTER" :statement (or even to pipe) and have the printer treat the ASCII strings :as control strings rather that as literals, please let me know. :Scott H. Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company