• "Heinz-Peter Nuettgens" <hnuettgens t-online.de> Mar 14 2001
• Arjan Knepper <jak01 pop3.NL.net> Mar 14 2001

Thanks for your suggestions, but it doesn't work like it should.

I cannot open the USB device by   fopen( "PRN:"...
and I don't find a possibility to redirect for example LPT1: to the USB
device.

Is there any possibilty just to open a stream to the windows standard
printer
without having to care where it is located at all??

Heinz-Peter Nuettgens

Heinz-Peter Nuettgens wrote:

 Thanks for your suggestions, but it doesn't work like it should.

 I cannot open the USB device by   fopen( "PRN:"...
 and I don't find a possibility to redirect for example LPT1: to the USB
 device.

 Is there any possibilty just to open a stream to the windows standard
 printer
 without having to care where it is located at all??

 Heinz-Peter Nuettgens


Print to LPT1 as you used to do and redirect the lpt1 port to the windows
printer you want to use.
See windows help "net use" command.

When you don't want to do it this way you probably need to open a device
directly using the DeviceIOControl and the CreateFile API functions.

DeviceIoControl
The DeviceIoControl function sends a control code directly to a specified
device driver, causing the corresponding device to perform the
corresponding operation.

BOOL DeviceIoControl(
  HANDLE hDevice,              // handle to device
  DWORD dwIoControlCode,       // operation control code
  LPVOID lpInBuffer,           // input data buffer
  DWORD nInBufferSize,         // size of input data buffer
  LPVOID lpOutBuffer,          // output data buffer
  DWORD nOutBufferSize,        // size of output data buffer
  LPDWORD lpBytesReturned,     // byte count
  LPOVERLAPPED lpOverlapped    // overlapped information
);

CreateFile
The CreateFile function creates or opens the following objects and returns
a handle that can be used to access the object:

Consoles
Communications resources
Directories (open only)
Disk devices (Windows NT/2000 only)
Files
Mailslots
Pipes
HANDLE CreateFile(
  LPCTSTR lpFileName,                         // file name
  DWORD dwDesiredAccess,                      // access mode
  DWORD dwShareMode,                          // share mode
  LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpSecurityAttributes, // SD
  DWORD dwCreationDisposition,                // how to create
  DWORD dwFlagsAndAttributes,                 // file attributes
  HANDLE hTemplateFile                        // handle to template file
);

Success,
Arjan