>I'm migrating a FPD 2.5 app to VFP6. The product does a lot of printing using PCL escape sequences with laser printers. Before printing, any required soft fonts (.fnt) files are copied to the printer. This is being accomplished with "COPY /B file.fnt lpt1:". I've been able to replace this with "COPY FILE file.fnt TO \\printername" on NTWS4.0 SP3 but have been forced to continue the use of the DOS Copy command on Win9x platforms (the former syntax causes an error 'Cannot Create File'; Fox is treating the printer name like a network share). Using this command causes a DOS window to pop up on the screen during the copy process. My question is two-fold:
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>1. Is there a better way to get the fonts to a printer (both local and network); i.e. an API call or 3rd party tool.
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>2. If I'm stuck with the COPY command, how can I get it to run in a minimized DOS window. I've tried adjusting the properties of command.com and foxrun.pif files to run minimized. This had no effect. I was able to modify the PIF so that the DOS Window Caption reads 'Uploading Fonts...'
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>The application is virtually finished and works great. The DOS window, however, takes away from some of the aesthetics.
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Take a look at my FAQ entry on using the CopyFile() API call rather than the DOS COPY command or VFP COPY FILE command. You can also look at using my API_APPRUN class and XCOPY (COPY is an internal command, so running it without a command processor is troublesome) to run DOS commands without a DOS window. You can download API_APPRUN from here on UT.