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[Petrus Vorster]

Hi all

Had anyone here dabbed into printer drivers?
There are a few commercial tools that can do what i need, but buying it is not going to happen in my organisation.
Basically, i need a Virtual Printer Interface that doesn't physically print documents, but channel print jobs to different printers.

In other words you have installed printers, pdf printers etc on e.g. a few computers on a network.
This tool then receives the print jobs as the default printer, but given the task name routes the job to a specific printer or send a copy to a pdf printer or do some other functions like save a copy of certain reports. (Like split large jobs between multiple printers)

I was wondering how you create something like that? It has to "register" in Windows as a printer driver, but then somehow be able to pass this job to another printer. I need something simple that can monitor my system's end of day report and make me a copy in pdf on a shared drive.
It will resolve a great need if one can do that.

-Regards, Peter

[Paul Squires]

Hi Peter - I wish that I could help you with this but I have no experience in this area.

[raymw]

Hi Peter,
I've not thought it through, but in w10 there is inbuilt print server/management software. That should take care of the driver side of things. Depending on the workload, maybe print your printouts to files, specifically named for where they are meant to be printed, say, and then you could have a background task polling that directory, and sending the file to the appropriate printer.

If only a few users, then train them to print on the correct printer - shouldn't be difficult XD.

Somehow, you have to pass the destination with the file, so you could design a naming structure, and everyone prints to pdf, and your program redirects it to the appropriate printer.

[Petrus Vorster]

Thanks guys

Our front systems still runs on XP!
No hopes there.
Zero hopes for any upgrades in the next 10 years.
Its very frustrating to have modern business needs with zero tools to achieve it.

It was a nice idea though, making a printer demon for that ancient systems.

Thanks for the friendly adive and ideas as always.

-Peter

[raymw]

xp has print server/management. Whatever you use, the user or software or something else will have to specify where the file is to be printed. How is that going to be done? Maybe you should think about early retirement ;-)