I had a similar need not long ago. Converting an old DOS system to VFP6, I needed to generate a 5 1/2" report (half-sheet) on a pin-feed dot-matrix printer. Windows always ejected the full 11" even though the printer itself was set for a 5 1/2" page size. There may have been other solutions, but I solved it much the same way you describe: print to a file and dump it to the printer directly. Works great for ASCII-style reports, and prints much faster than going through Windows, too.

>to let users have LOCAL stored parameters, I use a .LOC extension on a table , and after loading the common table, I check for a .LOC file on the local machine, if so , I merge that data unique. 99% of the time, no .LOC file exists, but for that 1%, it is a simple solution!
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>I probably would never have developed this, but I had to control ticket printers, and Windows kept resetting the page length to 11 inches ! So I developed a printer selector that builds temp files and then dumps them to the required printer, avoiding the windows drivers! After solving THAT nightmare, the routing issues seemed simple

Rick Borup, MCSD

recursion (rE-kur'-shun) n.
  see recursion.