DocMgr Printing

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Revision as of 21:43, 9 March 2012

DocMgr Printing

Currently there are 2 ways you can print from DocMgr:

1) Double-click the doc to launch the document's viewer then print from there.

2) For text docs you can use the "Print All" to simulate QSPOOL Forever Mode unspooling.

We would like to implement printing of selected docs directly from DocMgr. This would save the user from having to first launch the viewer program. We've played around with the ShellExecute command with the "print" action. The results are varied depending on doc type:

print (shellexecute='print',"full path to doc goes here",,"",0)

For .pdf docs, the doc does get sent to the default Windows printer. An undesirable side effect is that Adobe remains open after the print. Although it's minimized, it's still annoying.

For .htm docs it didn't work at all. Windows pops up a message saying that there's no program associated with this action for this doc type. I added the "print" action for .htm files. Still couldn't get it to work. Tried Chrome, Firefox, and IE. Nothing happened - no errors; no doc. Just nothing.

For .txt docs it opens the doc in your text editor. It does not print automatically. I have UE associated with .txt docs but in XP at least it seems to only support the "open" action. There was no way to add a program for "print".

Since you can store any type of file you want in a DocMgr archive we played with some other doc types.

If you happen to have any .doc docs, this can work very well. The document is sent to the default Windows printer, and unlike .pdf docs, no annoying viewer is left visible. This was tested with Open Office, not MS Office.

Other types were consistent in either opening their viewer program rather than printing or generating the Windows error indicating no program association.

So....

1) Would the ability to select one or more .pdf docs and print them directly from DocMgr be a useful enhancement? Do you mind that Adobe remains open after the print? Note, you only get one instance of Adobe even if multiple docs are printed.

2) Does anyone store .doc files in a DocMgr archive and would you want the print capability for them also?

3) If this is implemented do you agree that print requests for other doc types should be ignored or should they be launched and then let happen whatever happens? What happens may depend on what applications you have associated with printing for the file type chosen. It may mean getting the Windows error message.

4) Is printing to the default Windows printer adequate? Using "printto" and specifying a different Windows printer yielded unpredictable results.

And now back to the existing "Print All" option currently in DocMgr. As stated above, this was implemented to mimic the "forever mode" unspooling of QSPOOL. It is only for text files. Is anyone actually using this in DocMgr? It allows the user to choose any Comet printer for the output (not just Windows printers).