Class that receives network printer jobs (line printer)

[Guest]

Hi,
Can you point me in the right direction?
I need to emulate a network line printer, and parse through the string data
in the print job. The jobs will be printed from a 390 mainframe, but that
shouldn't change anything. I have searched the net for various terms and all
I get are 3rd party components that act more like 3270 clients than printers,
requiring the app to first log in to the mainframe. No no no, the mainframe
gets a print job, then establishes a session with the printer just like
windows apps. Maybe I am not entering the correct phrases in google or
live.com. If there is already a 3rd party component written for just this
purpose, which I have not found, I will pay for it.
Thanks

 

[Guest]

Also, I made a sink class using CDO to work with the SMTP server on windows
server 2003. Can something similar be done with the print server? Install a
windows driver for one of those dinosaur line printers, share it, give the
mainframe admins the IP, I am assuming since the printer wouldn't actually be
hooked up the spooler would hold the jobs, then go into the spooler, get the
jobs, somehow get them into a string format, parse/consume the data and
delete from the spooler.
I will also search on this thought. How reliale would this be? I need to
make sure I get every single job.
Thanks

 

[Guest]

I have come up short on my searching. I came across one app that read spl
files to a graphic, but that doesn't help and trying to figure out how to
expose the Text element was a nightmare for me.
Please help.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi pickedaname,

Regarding on this issue you mentioned, my understanding is that you want
to create an application running as a service, it will intercept all the
print job requests from other mainframe machines and let you do some
customzation & dispatching against those print requests, correct?

I think what you want to do is like a custom print queue which will receive
print job requests and dispatch them to other printers. You can try search
"windows print queue component" over internet to get some existing
solutions. Here are someones I've searched over web:

http://www.bluechillies.com/list.html?k=print+queue

http://www.vicman.net/lib/windows/printqueue

http://www.brothersoft.com/downloads/printer-queue.html

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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[Guest]

Hi Steven and thanks for the reply.
What I want to do is get the document from the print job, parse through the
text and get the fields I need, I will then insert them into the SQL
database.
I just need a component that will get me the text from the print document
within my class. I will have a look at the links you posted and get back to
you.
Thank you.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for your reply pickedaname,

Yes, print queue component is generally used to intercept and dispatch the
print jobs. So it will act like a intermediate dispatcher which accept
print jobs and send to the certain target printers.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Guest]

Hi Steve,
I do not want to send them to printers. I just want the text in .NET.
Thanks

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Pickedaname,

Print Queue can intercept all the coming print jobs, therefore, all the
print job content should also be available to you. The remain problem here
is that if you want to interpret/parse the print job, you need to know the
print job's detailed format.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Guest]

Hi Steven,
I am having trouble locating example C#/VB.NET code that uses the PrintQueue
class to expose print job documents that already exist in a systems print
queue.
Is this class new to the .NET 3.0 Framework? Can you point me to some sample
code?
Thank you.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for your reply Pickedaname,

Yes, the PrintQueue class is supplied in the .NET Framework 3.0 as part of
the Windows Presentation Foundation component classes.

For example on the PrintQueue, so far what I've found most over web are
using the PrintQueue to print some document(send document or job to print
queue):

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa969772.aspx

For intercept print job in print queue, you can have a look at the
"Diagnose Problematic Print Job Sample" in WPF samples of windows sdk for
vista:

#Printing Samples
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771482.aspx

The windows sdk for vista is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c2b1e300-f358-4523-
b479-f53d234cdccf&displaylang=en