I'm currently writing software which outputs information to a printer. I'd like to be able to 'capture' and view the output without actually printing it, so I don't have to chop down quite so many trees. I can output the print data to a file (the usual 'print to file' option), but I can't do much with it from there. Anyone know of any utilities that allow print files to be viewed?
Print testing
- Thread starter Berserker
- Start date
Associate
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 792
- Location
- Darwin, Australia
I dont think thats going to be easy.
Although PCL (and Postscipt for that matter) are written to a standard, every manufacturer will have small variations on it. Probably moreso with PS, as unless the manufacturer pays Adobe for a licence then its going to be emulated Postscript.
This will mean any app that opens the file will have variations on formatting depending on what manufacturers set of PCL instructions its set up for.
Of course you can open it in notepad but all you will get is chunks of PCL in amongst vast qualtities of garbage.
*edit*
Can you not output to a PDF writer instead of save as file?
The printers i work on allow you to print to file (tiff/pdf) from the print driver.
Quite probably not much help to you unless you have a certain kind of printer though
Although PCL (and Postscipt for that matter) are written to a standard, every manufacturer will have small variations on it. Probably moreso with PS, as unless the manufacturer pays Adobe for a licence then its going to be emulated Postscript.
This will mean any app that opens the file will have variations on formatting depending on what manufacturers set of PCL instructions its set up for.
Of course you can open it in notepad but all you will get is chunks of PCL in amongst vast qualtities of garbage.
*edit*
Can you not output to a PDF writer instead of save as file?
The printers i work on allow you to print to file (tiff/pdf) from the print driver.
Quite probably not much help to you unless you have a certain kind of printer though
Last edited:
That's what I'm after (print to TIFF, PDF, or some other document format), but I don't have that option. Any ideas gratefully received.
PS can be handled with ghostscript on Linux (up to a point). Don't know if there's a Windows version, but then my printer is PCL anyway so that's not going to help much.
PS can be handled with ghostscript on Linux (up to a point). Don't know if there's a Windows version, but then my printer is PCL anyway so that's not going to help much.
Associate
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 792
- Location
- Darwin, Australia
Hmmmmm have you tried using the 'Microsoft Document Image Writer' that comes installed in you printers folder by default?
I just tried it and it saves the file in an .mdi format which you can then save as a .tiff
Doesnt look too fancy though, so it will depend on what kind of documents you want to do
I just tried it and it saves the file in an .mdi format which you can then save as a .tiff
Doesnt look too fancy though, so it will depend on what kind of documents you want to do
That's an Office 2003 feature...
Which I just conveniently happen to have. \o/
It's not perfect but it's more than good enough. Thankyou.
PS - I also asked the same at work. One of our testing guys just sent me this - http://www.primopdf.com. Handy.
Which I just conveniently happen to have. \o/
It's not perfect but it's more than good enough. Thankyou.
PS - I also asked the same at work. One of our testing guys just sent me this - http://www.primopdf.com. Handy.
Last edited: