Print To File Output

[Dardasaba]

Hi,
I'm trying to use the print to file option in my printer port setting.
I set the print to file but then i get a file name box when i enter the file name i get the an output in the directory where the program i've been runinng is located and now this is what i want to know :
1. can i define a defualt output path ?
2. can I somehow review the prints ? open the file ?
3. can I reprint from the output file ?

Thanks in advance,

Dardasaba

 

[gbhall]

No defaults

There is no effective way to set a default path, it defaults to the path the application was launched from.

Normally, the print-to-file option is only used for text output (generic printer) which simulates a dot-matrix printer. The resulting file can be viewed by almost anything, as it is just text. You would define the file type as in "c:\temp\testfile.txt". Usually notepad is the default for opening text files (.txt). You could reprint from notepad in that case. Otherwise, open a command prompt and type 'COPY testfile.txt > prn" That does a straight copy to the attached printer on LPT1.

I've never tried print-to-file for a laser printer, so can give no advice, except it's probably a lot of hassle.....

As far as I've ever used it, this process works the same on all Windows OS versions, and I can't recall offhand if long file names are supported.

 

[Nodsu]

The format of the file output depends on the printer driver (and thus the printer itself). If it's a PCL driver/printer, then the output is in PCL language (there are viewers available for that). If it's a PS driver/printer, then the output is in PostScript and there are viewers available for that. If it's some god-knows-what driver/printer, then the output is in god-knows-what format and there's really no easy way to view it.

If you want to print to file, then you should consider one of the many PDF "printers". CutePDF is freeware. An alternative is installing any of the PS printer drivers and setitng them to print to file. Ghostscript and GSView are excellent programs to handle .ps and you can use them to convert the PS file into PDF, JPG, text or whatever.