>Hi Rob,
>
>PMFJI, but I am faced with a similar problem as Peter. I'm rewriting a dos app that prints to a form in 12 pitch throughout the each form. The forms are irregular size, about 5 inches long and 8.5 wide. I seem to remember when I was messing around printing to a dot matrix printer from windows before, that the printing was really slow.
>
>My question is, how in the world do you use the benefits of using the Windows Print drivers, and still be able to print fast to a dot matrix AND be able to use the WYSIWYG design in the VFP Report Designer? Is this even possible?
>
>If it's not possible, what are the best alternatives in your opinion?
>
>In the original project which I wrote years ago in dos, I created a printers table containing about 20 or so common printers with each of their respective known control codes, a task I didn't enjoy the first time and while I still have the codes that I've been using, there are new printers and hence new codes. In this project as I said before, I'm only sending the control code to print in 12 Pitch, but that could change as time goes on.
>
>Thanks for any help you can give me. -Rick
>
>>I suspect you are running into the usual 'windows takes control of your entire existence' problem... It is virtually impossible to send output directly to the printer using the windows printer drivers. If you really don't want to convert your hard-coded reports to FRXs, you might try the following: Direct your output to a text file (with the embedded printer control codes) and then send it directly out the printer port using either Ed Rauh's Copy_File() API (see FAQ under 'sending output directly to a printer' (or something like that), or using the RAWPRINT.FLL or RAWPRINT.VCX found in the Files section. These all bypass Windows to just squirt your stuff directly to the printer port, and are really easy to use. If your output is not exactly 8-1/2 x 11 inch pages, you will probably need to do printer setup on the dot matrix printer icon to use a custom page size as well.

Hi Rick:

Sorry for the delayed response: I've been off UT for awhile since your question.

Anyhow, basically, our recent stuff has used exactly what you had and what I described earlier: a table with some printer control codes which we macro-substitute ( ie: Strtran() ) at run-time to get the effects we want into a string, and squirt the string out the printer port with RAWPRINT. We also never use graphics mode fonts on the dot-matrix printer. This gives us the fastest output on the dot-matrix printer but sacrifices the ease of Windows printer driver usage. If it's not on dot-matrix, you won't see the speed difference on a laser printer, so you may want to try Windows printer drivers there. For odd-ball page sizes on continuous form (pin-feed) stock, you will need to set up a printer with a custom page-size to keep the alignment okay, as I mentioned above.

Wish I had a better approach, but that's where we are today in my shop...

HTH

Rob