The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Capturing print jobs

Does anyone know of an app or trick that will allow me to capture print jobs (and view the data) while still printing to a printer?

I have a problem with intermittent print jobs failing from a POS system which can't be cleared without performing a printer self-test and losing all the jobs in the buffer.

The POS runs on Win2K and prints to an Epson TM-U220B network receipt printer.

Jack of all
Tuesday, April 20, 2004

I don't know a trick, and I'll be curious to see what people come up with here, but you could build (well, modify really) your own print driver and intercept a copy of the stream to whereever you want.

I've done something somewhat related with the MS TTY driver, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be, never having worked on printer drivers before.

I'd think you could get the driver source as some sort of SDK from Epson.

Still, this'd be a pretty desperate measure.

Mongo
Tuesday, April 20, 2004

print to file (e.g. pdf, microsoft dvi), then print that.

mb
Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Get in touch with Duncan at http://www.merrioncomputing.com/ . He has the hook running on .NET, but I'm sure he'll be able to provide you with customized solutions.

KayJay
Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Mongo, thanks for the advice, I'll look into a modified driver (sounds like a lot of fun).

MB, printing to file isn't an option as it's a busy point of sale machine printing directly to the kitchen. I need to capture the print job as well as send the job to the printer without user intervention.

Jack of all
Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Tried the "Keep printed documents" setting under Advanced in the printer settings?

Motown (AU)
Wednesday, April 21, 2004

That would save me losing the jobs on self-test, but when you do several hundred receipts a night... it also wouldn't help me find what the problem is.

I have found a solution from http://www.frogmorecs.com/ called Print Distributor, with a 30 day trial, that allows me to set up multiple printers on the one port (so I can send to the printer and to file). Handy little thing.

Thanks for your help guys.

Jack of all
Wednesday, April 21, 2004

...took me a while to realize that POS means point-of-sale. It means something completely different at my workplace.

Rob VH
Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Go and download the "free" (if you are OK with seeing an ad in your browser) pdf995 plugin which captures all print output and converts it to a PDF file

http://www.pdf995.com/download.html

Code Monkey
Wednesday, April 21, 2004