Printing from command line

[Guest]

I want to issue a command line command to print a document in Word format
(.doc)(or .pdf, or .rtf, or any other standard format.) I can do it with .txt
documents, but want to print using a proportional font, and it is a real pain
formatting text documents in a text editor. Is there any easy way of doing
this? (One possibility, if it can't be done directly from the command line,
might be the use of an Active-X control, but I am not sure where or how to
find a control which will do this.)

 

[Guest]

no way.....

 

[Guest]

....but if your software is installed correctly you can print the files
without opening their parent program by right clicking on the file name and
selecting "print" while in windows and not in a dos enviroment...

 

[Guest]

Right! If I can do this in Windows with a right click, can I issue the same
command from within my database program to do it under program control?
(What I am trying to do is print a series of form letters (from within my
database program), with attachments specific to the particular form letter.
If I could store these attachments as formatted documents the end users could
modify and maintain them instead of coming back to me to change them every
few weeks.) It isn't practical to make the end user right click on a file
name to print each attachment - there are 30 to 50 letters, each with 1 to 3
attachments in each weekly batch. My database (ZIM) is able to issue system
commands to effect what I guess are DOS commands (rather than Windows)
(things like copy, delete, rename). But what I understand you to be saying
is that it is impossible to use this to print a document. Any other
suggestions? (How about the idea of an Active-X control??)
I am really grateful to you for your willingness to help

 

[Guest]

hmm, i would use a vb script / macro that would perform/control the printing
of the files. Never considered using a dos command for an application like
yours. I will ponder on it some more and get back with you.

Not sure what is ZIM, but sounds interesting to me..

 

[Guest]

i noticed that the ZIM print utility is able to open .doc files Have you
tried to obtain this program as an addin to your db?

 

[Guest]

Nope. Didn't know about it. I will explore it, and thank you profoundly for
your help.
Incidentally, Zim is a Canadian product going back to the 1970's, a true
relational database, platform-independent, with its own very easy-to-use
programming language. It is the major database in Brazil, but never caught
on in North America. Very efficient, and incredibly stable (I have had to
re-index one table in one of my databases once in 20 years. Otherwise it has
continued to tick along unsupervised.