Printing in a generic way - like the rest of Python

[Terry Reedy]

"Ed Connell" <connell at noflashspam.net> wrote in message
news:0r0wa.386$vs.311 at newssvr17.news.prodigy.com...
>
> No, I mean something as simple as printing an ASCI text file. (I
mean
> sending the file to the system printer.)  My program ran just fine
in Linux,
> (I used system( 'lpr %s' % filename ) and it worked just fine.

'system' call are not generic as they depend on program loaded and
accessible on particular system.

>Now I want  to make the same program run in MS-Windows, and wondered
if there is some
> generic way to send files to the printer as there are generic ways
to delete
> a file, say, and all sorts of other stuff.

This might actually be a be a nice enhancement to os module...

>  If the answer is no, then my next question is, how do you print a
file in
> the Windows world.

Usually, from within an application that knows how to print a
particular file type by selecting 'print' on its 'file' menu.  For
ASCII text, Notepad works.  From an MSDOS prompt, "type file >lpt1:"
does it (assuming your printer is connected to parallel port 1), but
this does not send a formfeed, so you will have to hit the formfeed
button on your printer.  This does not work from the windows Run
prompt (on my machine), but this, for example, does:
os.system(r"type c:\Python\tem.txt >lpt1:")

Terry J. Reedy