Article ID: 133163 - Last Review: February 24, 2005 - Revision: 3.4

How to control printer attributes for a report at run time

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This article was previously published under Q133163

SUMMARY

When designing a report, a developer does not always know which printer will be used. As a result, the developer needs to give the user a way to change the printer and printer attributes at run time. This article shows by example how to write code that does this.

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MORE INFORMATION

Visual FoxPro has enhanced and added commands and functions for controlling and getting printer information. Please see the Help menu for more information on these commands:

   SET PRINTER TO
   APRINTER()
   PRTINFO()
   GETPRINTER()

The following example shows that a report can be sent to an HP LaserJet IIID on LPT2 with print duplex and landscape selected, and then the same report can be sent to a Panasonic KX-P1180 on LPT1 using a custom paper size.

To run the example code, you must have the printers installed in Windows. If you don't, you need to install them, and set up a user-defined paper size under printer setup in Windows for the Panasonic. Set the user-defined size using Millimeters (MM) as the measuring unit with the Width at 2159 and the Length at 1778.

For testing purposes, you may connect the printers to FILE instead of LPT1 or LPT2. If you do connect to FILE, make sure that you also substitute FILE for LPT1 or LPT2 in the following example code.

For more information on installing or changing Printer settings in Windows, please see Windows' Help menu.

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Step-by-step example

This example works on the following platforms:

Windows 3.1
Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Windows 95
Windows NT 3.5 or 3.51
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows 2003 Server

Note Visual FoxPro 5.0 and later run only under 32-bit operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows NT 3.5 and later. See the product documentation for your specific version of Visual FoxPro to determine the supported operating systems.

If you have trouble setting custom paper sizes or other printer attributes, verify that you have the latest printer driver for your specific platform, and check the printer documentation or contact the manufacturer to find out more about your printer's capabilities.

Open Testdata.dbc in Visual FoxPro 6.0..
Create a new report by using Quick Report. Choose the Customer table and add the Cust_id and Company fields to the report. Save the report as Myreport, and then close the report.
Create a text file called Panprint.txt that contains these lines:
DEVICE=Panasonic KX-P1180 OUTPUT=LPT1: ORIENTATION=0 PAPERSIZE=256 PAPERLENGTH=1778 PAPERWIDTH=2159 DEFAULTSOURCE=8
Note Most dot-matrix printers use PAPERSIZE=256 to define a custom paper size. If you use a custom paper size, you must include PAPERLENGTH and PAPERWIDTH.
Create a second text file called Hpprint.txt that contains these lines:
DEVICE=HP LaserJet IIID OUTPUT=LPT2: ORIENTATION=1 PAPERSIZE=1 DEFAULTSOURCE=7 DUPLEX=2
Note For more information about the different printer settings, see PRTINFO() in Visual FoxPro Help menu.

Create a program that is named Runrpt.prg, and enter the following code:

   USE Myreport.frx  && Open the FRX as a table
   LOCATE FOR Objtype = 1 AND Objcode = 53  && find the record that holds
   ** the printer information. For more information on the Table Structure
   ** of an .FRX file, see 'Table Structures of Table Files' in Help.

   REPLACE Tag WITH ""  && Remove any Printer codes that may be stored in
   ** the Tag memo

   REPLACE Tag2 WITH ""  && Remove any Printer codes that may be stored in
   ** the Tag2 memo

   APPEND MEMO Expr FROM Hpprint.txt OVERWRITE  && Replace any printer
   ** setting already there with the HP IIID Settings

   USE  && Close Myreport.frx
   SET PRINTER TO NAME 'HP LaserJet IIID'
   REPORT FORM Myreport TO PRINT NEXT 60  && Send the report to the
   ** HP IIID printer using the printer attributes specified in the
   ** Expr memo field.

   USE Myreport.frx  && Open the FRX as a table
   LOCATE FOR Objtype = 1 AND Objcode = 53  && find the record that holds
   ** the printer information

   APPEND MEMO Expr FROM Panprint.txt OVERWRITE  && Replace any printer
   ** setting already there with the Panasonic KX-P1180 Settings

   USE  && Close Myreport.frx
   SET PRINTER TO NAME 'Panasonic KX-P1180'
   REPORT FORM Myreport TO PRINT NEXT 60  && Send the report to the
   ** Panasonic KX-P1180 printer using the printer attributes
   ** specified in the Expr memo field.