You guys are all being very helpful, as always. This is good stuff and it's helping me work out possibilities.
@Mike Dawson: thanks Mike, directly accessing the NIC wont work in this case because we wont have all these devices on the same premises. They'll be too remote for a single network. Depending on how the project develops once it's launched, there could be devices all over the country. I dont think you can connect on a single network that far can you and therefore be able to access the NICs directly? I think it will require internet if we're to keep it low cost? @Ryan LeTulle: yes i think thats a certainty. That way we send the absolute minimum of data down the line and use the programmign inside the printer to format it and make it look pretty for the user. It's a fairly straightforward process to have templates stored in laser printer memory and overlaid with all kinds of fonts, graphics, logos, shading etc so a small amount of data prints up as quite a complex page. And you can manipulate those templates remotely too. I did that for several years before i started building web sites. @Ian Skinner: Thanks Ian, that's really the nub of the discussion at our end - how are we going to connect the print devices? I have a background in programming laser printers - that's what i did for a living before getting into web development. so i have no problem taking text and converting it using PCL or PostScript or other language formats so it produces pretty print from a tiny ASCII text file. But the issue for us is how to connect these devices? If we connect them to the internet, there's a modem and phone line and connection to pay for. If we use a wifi connection we can probably do a deal for many of the little dongles and get the cost of that down, but then cell phone coverage is great in the cities but pretty flaky in a lot of areas outside the cities. Most of these locations have a fax, so another option would be to connect our device to that somehow, rather in the way the answering machines pass faxes through and snag people talking I'm kind of hoping someone is going to say "why dont you .... " and suggest one of those 'slap the forehead'-'why the hell didn't *I* think of that!" ideas. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 12:59 AM, Ian Skinner<[email protected]> wrote: > > What is the nature of the connection between the server and these printers? > Will they be on the same LAN or WAN or are they only going to be accessible > over the internet? > > If the former, many modern network printers have the capability to be sent > print jobs to their IP address. Thus I would suggest digging up the > specifications of these printers and see what options they may be exposing > for you. > > HTH > Ian ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:323354 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
