From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-02-19T03:33:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Printing in Ruby


On Feb 18, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Alexandru Toma wrote:

> It seems there is not a lot of information on this subject so I have a
> few questions:
>
> 1. How can you do simple printing from Ruby? If you have a string how
> can you print it? At the very least I would like to be able to select
> the size and maybe the font from the printer's ROM. I know that you
> could do this in the DOS days by sending a few control codes dirrectly
> to the parallel port and then the text you wanted to print (this  
> worked
> for dot matrix printers where you had a manual which detailed all  
> those
> control codes). How would you do this in Ruby? Also, would it be
> possible to do the same for modern inkjet or laser printers? Would it
> also be possible to do this in a platform independent way? (I'm more
> interested in Linux, but it would be great if the same code also  
> worked
> on Windows)
>
> 2. Would it be possible to do something like the above but for USB
> printers? How?
>
> 3. How would you do more advanced printing? I know of ruby-cups... are
> there other alternatives? How about Windows?
>
> 4. I have a program (it's actually a Rails application) that generates
> PDFs using PDF::Writer. How would I be able to print the PDFs  
> dirrectly
> without having to save them or open them in a browser... I just  
> want to
> send them directly to the printer after they are generated. Ruby-cups
> seems to have .printFile which will print an existing file but, as I
> said, I don't want to save the file first. Can I just pipe the  
> generated
> file to some application? Are there more ellegant ways of doing this?
> How about Windows?
>
>
> I'm sorry for asking so many questions at once. If you could answer  
> even
> just one of them I would be very grateful. Also, if you have any links
> about the subject or you know of other discussions on the topic that
> would help as well.
>
> Many thanks in advance.
>
> Alex
>
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>

assuming cups or lpd is setup for pdfs you can just shell  out to lpr  
$file_name. As far as windows goes I'm sure win32api or  win32ole can  
get you where you need to be.