Capture text sent to a printer to a file.

[John Graves]

Does any one know how to caputer text data sent to a printer to a file. I
have seen a window service that captures text data sent to a printer on the
server and save it to a file. I would like to know how to do this. I have
many reports that are produced on an IBM mainframe as text that I would like
to send to a Windows' sever as printer output but capture to a text file.
Currently we use an FTP process and a print to printer would reduce new
report setup time by a few hours each and reduce the mess.

Thansk,

 

[John Graves]

Pete,

Thanks for your help...

If this is not the right newsgroup do you know what one I should use?

I can control printer driver on the server that will be receiving the text
file from the mainframe.

I have setup a pcl and text only printer on the server and ran test from
the mainframe.
The reports are sent to the server and appear as *.SHD and *.SPL in the
windows spool directory.
This is true for the pcl and text (they are in EMF format).

I would like to write a .NET c# windows service on this server to convert
these files from EMF to text and then
remove them from the spooler the correct way.

Any references about controling the spooler would be appreciated.

Thanks,--
John Graves