>When printing to a dot-matrix printer I often like to bypass the Windows printer driver. For instance I'm setting up my reservation app on some front desk computers that each have a little Okidata printer attached. When I print using SET PRINT ON, the print head makes 4 passes for each line and the result is still inferior to the standard Okidata printer font.
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>On my development computer I can use either $$$ or FOPEN('PRN') to bypass the Windows driver. But on most of the client's computer I get the error 'Error accessing printer spooler' when I try to use $$$ to print to the local dot-matrix computer. Ironically, it seems to work if I select one of the network laser printers as default (when I don't need it).
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>Anyone have a clue as to what affects the success of these print methods?
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>It may be significant that my computer (where they work) is not on a network.
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>On one computer, I was able to use ??? after reinstalling the standard Windows Okidata printer driver. But I still can't use FOPEN which I prefer.
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>Anyway to tell in advance if $$$ is going to work?
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>All suggestions welcome.
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An alternative that I use - printing to a file and then sending the file directly to the port using the CopyFile() API call works uniformly across platforms; take a look at the FAQ entry I posted on the subject.