>We have a huge app that is in the process of being completely converted to VFP7. In the meantime, while hundreds of reports have been redone using the report writer, there are still hundreds of reports that are printed via either ?? or @...say and of course condensed printing is set using ??? in those cases. In almost all cases, these reports still print. However, some of our customers now have low-end GDI printers like the Epson C40UX or Lexmark Z43 color inkjet that came with their new pcs when they upgraded. Is there anyway (quickly) to get these reports to still print while we continue the process of converting them? It will take some time to complete the process, but the customers still need to print the remaining reports as is. Any ideas? The reports are scattered amongst hundreds of prgs so the process is slow and time-consuming converting each one.


Not trivially; there are no 'printer codes' per se in the GDI printers, since they have no internal rendering engine to address. Your best bet in the short run is going to be to purchase a commercial version of GhostScript (a PostScript emulator that works through the GDI) and send PostScript to the printers; GhostScript will intercept the PostScript codes and render the page through the GDI. This means that you'll have to support PostScript through your ??/@ reports - there's at least one commercial GhostScript implementation that supports PCL and Epson LX codes as well as PostScript, but it's going to run ~ $100/station, about what a real printer would cost. I'm not certain you'll be saving time or money - you're likely to find that the cost of 'real' printers to replace the GDI crap is going to be less than the cost of implementing GhostScript or converting your reports.