Printing on a Windows workstation

[Andy Robinson]

"Robert Parker" <rparker at bserv.com> wrote:

>Hi All
>    I have waded through the man pages and the functions to try and
>determine what to use to print to a printer using Win32.  I don't know if
>there is a COM that could be used or some other method to access the printer
>API in Win32.  I don't feel excited about having to generate lines of escape
>sequences to accomplish formatting and proper presentation.  Does any one
>have any suggestions?
>
>    As a newbie it sure is helpful having this newsgroup.  Am greatful for
>any assistance.
>
>Robert Parker-)
<plug>
In the forthcoming "Python Programming for Win32", I have a chapter on
printing under Windows.  Broadly I cover three suggestions:
- directly drawing to a printer canvas (Pythonwin does exactly what
you want, just like any other Windows graphics code)
- automating Word
- generating PDF
</plug>
Since it is not out yet, You can find some code examples for the Word
stuff at www.robanal.demon.co.uk/PythonWindowsTutorial.pdf

And you should look at PIDDLE (www.strout.net/python/piddle), which
includes the PDF-generating library.  It's quite easy to write scripts
to do any report you want as a PDF document, although the recipient
has to open it and hit 'print'.  

If you want to write directly to a Windows device context, try the
snippet here:

========simpleprintdemo.py==============================
# basic printing demonstration

import win32ui
import win32con

myprinter = "HP DeskJet 820C Series Printer"   
# get the name from your Printers folder

def print_it():
	dc = win32ui.CreateDC()
	dc.CreatePrinterDC()   # ties it to your default printer
	dc.StartDoc('My Python Document')
	#dc.SetMapMode(win32con.MM_LOENGLISH)
	dc.StartPage()
	# text - near the top left corner somewhere	
	dc.TextOut(110,790, 'Hello, World')  # 1 inch in, 8 up
	# try to draw a box around it - not device-specific
	dc.MoveTo(100,800)
	dc.LineTo(400,800)
	dc.LineTo(400,700)
	dc.LineTo(100,700)
	dc.LineTo(100,800)
	dc.EndPage()
	dc.EndDoc()
	print 'sent to printer'
	del dc

=========================================================
The thing I did not cover, because it works but is too ugly for
real-world reports, is that you can print a text file (or Postscript
file if that is what you have) with a DOS command like
		 copy myfile.txt lpt1:
and of course can automate this with a Python call to os.system().


Hope this helps.

Andy