Virtual printer

sailor · #1 11th August 2009, 03:37 PM

April manages a business where Boris is a partner who is solely an investor and does not participate in managing the day to day operations. Every day April prints out about 20 pages and faxes them to Boris. The business runs proprietary OS and software so I can't see a simple way of faxing directly from that main computer. My thought is to connect a virtual printer which will save the images to memory and then fax them without having to print to paper. Is it possible and reasonably simple to have a program which would behave as a printer? In other words, I want to have a windows computer which will appear as a printer to the other, main, computer and save the pages to disk. Then faxing is trivial. (Actually email rather than fax seems like the next logical step.)

tunaman · #2 11th August 2009, 08:50 PM

Well, the built-in Windows Fax printer can't be shared, so that rules out simply printing to an XP box over the network.

Many fax programs support network printing, although every one I'm familiar with (WinFax, ActiveFax, OptioFax) requires a client application to do the actual addressing, and in most cases, the client is Win32 only. And most of the enterprise fax apps I'm familar with cost $$$$, especially if you need a client that can do Unix, A/S 400, etc.

What type of OS is the server running? One possibility would be to print the reports to a file, then copy the PRN to the Windows computer, then "print it" to the local fax virtual printer via command-line. It's clunky, but it might work, depending on the host OS.

Random Precision · #3 11th August 2009, 09:06 PM

By "proprietary OS" I'm guessing that a simple solution like a free PDF creator program would be out of the question. Because those programs really are just printer drivers which output to .pdf format instead of HPGL or ascii like standard printer drivers. For that matter, the FAX programs I've seen are also just printer drivers themselves. Any possibility of finding FAX driver software for this OS?

Victor Frankenstein · #4 11th August 2009, 09:21 PM

Sorry. I can't offer any help here.

Whenever someone at the office asks me about paper printing or faxing I put my fingers in my ears, shout "print is dead! print is dead!", and run away.

tunaman · #5 12th August 2009, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Random Precision

Any possibility of finding FAX driver software for this OS?

Well, the thing is, I doubt the server has a modem, and very, very few IT folks would allow you to install one on a production server just to save an employee a few minutes every day. So the software would need to be able to print over the network, which is rare for most free\low cost faxing programs.

If sailor would come in and tell us what OS the server is running (I doubt it's completely "proprietary", as in "the company wrote this OS from scratch"), then the PDF -> Fax thing could be a possibility. After all, aren't there PDF drivers for almost every OS made?

Bear_Nenno · #6 12th August 2009, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tunaman

So the software would need to be able to print over the network, which is rare for most free\low cost faxing programs.

It doesn't have to print over the server, because if he can find a pdf driver for that OS, then he can just print locally and then email it.
So what is the OS?

sailor · #7 12th August 2009, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bear_Nenno

It doesn't have to print over the server, because if he can find a pdf driver for that OS, then he can just print locally and then email it.
So what is the OS?

It doesn't matter because I am not allowed to even touch that computer, much less install anything. The only solution is to install an external "printer" which can save to disk (or to continue printing to paper).

tunaman · #8 12th August 2009, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bear_Nenno

It doesn't have to print over the server, because if he can find a pdf driver for that OS, then he can just print locally and then email it.
So what is the OS?

But it's a server, and one running a non-Windows OS. And, as Sailor said, he can't touch it, so that severely restricts our options.

One ugly workaround would be to find out what kind of printer Boris has at home, and install the same driver on an XP machine on the network. Share the printer, then check the "Print to file" option in the printer properties.

You could then email the resulting PRN file to Boris, and he could print it by opening a command-prompt and typing COPY FILENAME.PRN TO \\BORISSCOMPUTER\BORISSPRINTER.

It might also be possible to share a PDF driver (locally) and have April use the same command to send the PRN to the PDF printer. If it works, you could easily automate all this with a batch file.

blank · #9 14th August 2009, 01:16 PM

Can they email from that computer? If so you can use an email-to-fax gateway.

blank · #10 14th August 2009, 01:17 PM

Otherwise connect an all-in-one printer which will save the print to memory and then fax from there.

tunaman · #11 15th August 2009, 01:30 AM

It's a *production server*... it can't be touched. He can't install any hardware or software on the server - thus, all the Rube Goldberg workarounds.

sailor · #12 15th August 2009, 05:35 AM

Thanks for all the responses. I need to think about this a bit more. The printer is a regular HP printer and I assume the computer must have some kind of driver for it installed. If I wanted to install a different model I'd need to install a driver.... This must be possible.... I might do a little asking around and see how far I get.

si_blakely · #13 17th August 2009, 02:53 AM

How is the printer connected to the server? Serial, Parallel, USB or network

If it is a physical port, you need a port capture program to capture the print stream from the server to a file. If the printer is on a network, you can run a lpd daemon to do the same thing. Then you can pump the captured file through a virtual printer (either Postscript, PCL or maybe HPGL) to get a fax-able output. It would be easier to do this sort of thing with a Linux box, but it should be possible to do it with Windows as well, just a bit trickier.

Si

sailor · #14 17th August 2009, 03:42 AM

Hi si_blakely, it's good to see you around.

Yes, I was thinking of some way to capture the stream from computer to printer but then I thought this might be very difficult to do in the sense that the interpretation of the data would be very specific to the printer and too dificult and not worth the effort.

This is a small business, a franchise, and the computer system is supplied by the franchise and is connected to their network and the franchisee is not allowed to even think about touching it. It's not a huge thing for me but I thought I might try to improve that situation. I think the best thing is to try to engage the computer guy the next time he comes around and see how he reacts.

si_blakely · #15 17th August 2009, 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailor

Yes, I was thinking of some way to capture the stream from computer to printer but then I thought this might be very difficult to do in the sense that the interpretation of the data would be very specific to the printer and too dificult and not worth the effort.

It depends on the printer - a HP Laserjet will be postscript or PCL, and thus pretty easy to turn into a faxable format - deskjets, not so much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailor

This is a small business, a franchise, and the computer system is supplied by the franchise and is connected to their network and the franchisee is not allowed to even think about touching it. It's not a huge thing for me but I thought I might try to improve that situation. I think the best thing is to try to engage the computer guy the next time he comes around and see how he reacts.

Yeah - it would be nice to have a better solution, but I suspect that a "hands off, no changes" attitude will prevail. Sadly.

Si