Re: [flexcoders] Printing directly to a printer

[Anatole Tartakovsky]

James,     You touched on taboo subject of Internet-enabled applications. Basically, printers and other local resources like file system seem to be out of reach of developers - the reason being that with complete silent control of the printer you are asking for rogue page can send thousands of pornographic images throughout the enterprise. So, in order to get the access to the resources like disk or printer you need to be "trusted" - and over the years it was getting harder and harder to get these credentials in Internet enabled envitonments.     Second, you really need a whole lot more then being able to bypass printing dialog for the application. Honestly, aside from usability, I do not want user to select the paper size - the application in most cases knows better (or can make better decision) if it should use landscape or portrait mode/request paper size. Printers are quite intelligent and can provide all the options to the application if they are given a chance. Essentially, printer API should be far more extensive then paper size (duplex, paper bin and paper type are few obvious ones) and should have read/write access.       Flex positions itself in large as front office development platform. As such business printing is essential. I hope that Flash8.5 will address these issues under more flexible security model. Other alternative of course would be to go along PDF/FlashPaper solution - with well known interoperability benefits and business application usability issues.       In meanwhile, you do not have too many options. If you are deplying under IE you can get source code version of our browser activeX (www.htmlprinting.com) as a starting point  to provide you with back door to the printing functionality while maintaining complete security. After that you can "subclass" the creation of PrintJob and expand the properties/methods via reasonable amount of C++ code. That might be about 1 man/month project for proficient C++ programmer - assuming you can live with IE-only solution. Breaking Mozilla to add printing, while possible, has not prove to be viable for commercial products.   Hope this helps Anatole [EMAIL PROTECTED]           ----- Original Message ----- From: James To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 12:00 PM Subject: [flexcoders] Printing directly to a printer Hello List! One more problem for you...Is there anybody out there that is currently printing directly to a printer? Without the dialog boxes and previews, I mean straight to the printer...Example code would be appreciated, thoughts on the subject are welcomed... James -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com SPONSORED LINKS Web site design development Computer software development Software design and development Macromedia flex Software development best practice YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS  Visit your group "flexcoders" on the web.    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.