I know someone must have done this OI already. We need to print some 6x4 cards on a dot-matrix printer in OI. We did this in AREV using plain R/Basic. In OI, using OIPI, I can't seem to get the printer to form feed properly to the "next" card. That is, print a card… print a card…print a card.

Can't we tell OIPI to form feed to the next card. At present, when the printer does a form feed, it behaves as if it believes that each document is still 8.5 x 11 instead of 6x 4.

Below is our Set_Printer command:

margin=.25,.5,.25,.25,6,4" Convert ',' to @FM in margin x=Set_Printer('INIT','Recall','Recall',margin,'',Output:@VM:'2')

Any suggestions,

Ray Chan

Ray,

A few things…

1. Are you checking the return value from your INIT command? I'm wondering if you are getting "-14" which means "Invalid page size".

2. If this is happening on a Win32 OS (i.e. NT, 2000, XP) then you need to know that custom sized forms like this are troublesome. Here's a thread that goes into some detail about this. In summary, Win32 machines require that custom sized forms be created for each machine before programs can actually print a document of that size. As a workaround we created our own DLL that creates a custom sized form "on-the-fly" (and removes it after you are done printing) so that our clients won't have to go through this exercise. Drop us a note if you are interested.

3. Another alternative, especially if you still have your AREV code handy, is to invest in Splaver's DirectPrint.DLL. Rather than work with the Windows print engine it allows you to send output directly to the printer. Hence, you can salvage your old legacy code (print commands too) and use it just as nicely as AREV did. The downside is that if you use printer specific code (like PCL) then you are restricted to the type of printers you can output to…unless you create some kind of printer lookup matrix.

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

Ray,

If you print from OI it uses the Windows Printer drivers and therefore the form sizes. You need to create a custom form size or setup a separate printer driver that has that form as the default. Then when you print you should do a FF at the end of each card. If you try to do this without taking into account the printer drivers and forms it is virtually impossible to get things to line-up. Been there done that!

HTH,

John

Ray,

If you're stuck - what about printing via Mail Merge in MS Word? I think Word might handle the page breaks OK. Anyway that's easy to check. The solution is not as streamlined as it could have been since there's a different program involved (Word) and you have to do the actual printing (Ctrl+P) from that other program, and have to close that other program afterwards, but it's not too bad. I can help you with the programming.

- Oystein -

The report designer supports 6x4 labels (1 up)

Don, Oystein, Karl and John,

Sorry for the delay in thanking you for your response. Been busy with some computer problems (exchange server is misbehaving ;-(, dropped my laptop, little annoying bugs, etc.)

Okay…in connection with this problem, I think we will try Don Bakke's suggestion for now. It seems the easiest to implement and get going. That is, we created a custom form (6x4)for the server. Hope this works.

Oystein, I appreciate your kind offer to show me the way of interfacing with Word. You must still be in the Christmas spirit and have an abundance of patience . Honestly it sounds like fun and I look forward to your expertise. When do I start teacher?

In general, however, if Sprezz were to finish S/Merge and polish it, then you wouldn't need to go outside of OI to do the merging stuff. Things would be simpler for developers and user to do simple merges like in AREV. That would be fun as well!

Cheerio,

Ray

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