Al,

> Hmm... there are lots of variables at play here. Without knowing the
> details of your environment, a few ideas:
>
> - If the printer is a networked printer on a queue, set your local
> workstation's printer driver to "print directly to the printer". You don't
> need the extra buffer of a local spooler pushing data to a network spooler.
>
> - If the target printer is a GDI printer, try substituting one that is
> not. I don't know if jobs sent to such a printer are rendered then spooled
> locally, or spooled, then rendered on-the-fly as they are despooled, but
> in either case it's another complication.
>
> Unfortunately, both of the above are environment-specific and not general.
> One other thing you could try is getting Word to print to a file, then
> dump the file directly to the target printer so it's received all at once
> rather than a page at a time.

My client does not want to 'print directly to the printer' because they had
a few bad experiences with the printer going offline while the negine is
running.

Is there a way to determine whether the local spooler has pushed the data
to the network spooler? We could delay the printing of the current document
until all data has been pushed to the network spooler.

We will try to output print different printer

Printing to a file. Is there a practical limit to the size of the print
file to be efficient? The engine has two usages. (1) it processes a data
file that is to be printed after hours. This data file typically contains
thousands of records (up to few hundred thousands on a couple of weekends a
year) and the documents are printed on an IBM InfoPrint 40 printer. We are
not aware of any problems with this after hours usage. (2) The engine is
also used to print letters on demand. The user selects up to 100 documents
and starts the engine. The documents are printed on a HP LaserJet 5. This
is the usage that gives us some problems.

Thanks,
Daniel