Poll - Do you "Print to File"
- Thread starter Max
- Start date
danbrinkman89
Senior Member
no
Hop
Senior Member
Not if I can help it. :mrgreen:
This "feature" is a "left-over" from the "good old DOS" era of computing and printing when not everyone had, or could afford to have, a printer attached to their PC. But just about everyone had a floppy disk drive and could "print to file" on a floppy disk and use Nike Net to transfer that file to a PC that did have a printer. Like from home to work.
The so-called .PRN file on the floppy was a binary image of what would normally be sent to a printer if one was attached to the PC. To get this sucker to actually print on another PC you needed to use the DOS command "COPY /b filename.prn printername" where "filename.prn" was the file saved to floppy using the "print to file" option; "printername" was usually just LPT1 or PRN but could be more complicated if the printer was on a network; and "/b" informed the COPY command that a binary file was being "copied" to the printer so it wouldn't insert gratuitous line feed and carriage return characters, or worse, interpret certain binary code as an ASCII code for an "end-of-file" delimiter and therefore truncate the print file.
One problem with all of this is the printer that you selected on your PC had to match the printer on the target PC in order for the binary gobbly-gook to be understood by the printer on the target PC. Not much of a problem in the early days when almost all printers were dot-matrix impact printers using a generic printer driver. It can be a pretty big problem today what with ink squirters and laser printers all having their own specific drivers and so-called Centronics parallel port connections giving way to USB, Ethernet, and wireless. Microsoft Windows tries to support every printer in existence today, and it does a pretty good job for the most part, but the end-user usually needs to install a driver written for their particular printer to take advantage of all the "features" offered by that printer. That could make the "print" file incompatible with the target printer on another computer, or even incompatible with another printer on the same computer.
The point of all this is the "print to file" checkbox will produce a file that is specific to the printer you choose in the Print window when using Alibre Design. As some others have noted, this can be useful when sending the file to a job printer like Kinko; just make sure they know what to do with it.
Max, I hope Alibre isn't contemplating eliminating the "Print-to-file" checkbox on the File > Print menu. It costs almost nothing in code and some people do use it.
Hop
This "feature" is a "left-over" from the "good old DOS" era of computing and printing when not everyone had, or could afford to have, a printer attached to their PC. But just about everyone had a floppy disk drive and could "print to file" on a floppy disk and use Nike Net to transfer that file to a PC that did have a printer. Like from home to work.
The so-called .PRN file on the floppy was a binary image of what would normally be sent to a printer if one was attached to the PC. To get this sucker to actually print on another PC you needed to use the DOS command "COPY /b filename.prn printername" where "filename.prn" was the file saved to floppy using the "print to file" option; "printername" was usually just LPT1 or PRN but could be more complicated if the printer was on a network; and "/b" informed the COPY command that a binary file was being "copied" to the printer so it wouldn't insert gratuitous line feed and carriage return characters, or worse, interpret certain binary code as an ASCII code for an "end-of-file" delimiter and therefore truncate the print file.
One problem with all of this is the printer that you selected on your PC had to match the printer on the target PC in order for the binary gobbly-gook to be understood by the printer on the target PC. Not much of a problem in the early days when almost all printers were dot-matrix impact printers using a generic printer driver. It can be a pretty big problem today what with ink squirters and laser printers all having their own specific drivers and so-called Centronics parallel port connections giving way to USB, Ethernet, and wireless. Microsoft Windows tries to support every printer in existence today, and it does a pretty good job for the most part, but the end-user usually needs to install a driver written for their particular printer to take advantage of all the "features" offered by that printer. That could make the "print" file incompatible with the target printer on another computer, or even incompatible with another printer on the same computer.
The point of all this is the "print to file" checkbox will produce a file that is specific to the printer you choose in the Print window when using Alibre Design. As some others have noted, this can be useful when sending the file to a job printer like Kinko; just make sure they know what to do with it.
Max, I hope Alibre isn't contemplating eliminating the "Print-to-file" checkbox on the File > Print menu. It costs almost nothing in code and some people do use it.
Hop
Thanks for the explanation Hop,
I remember that stuff, but I didn't really know the details. My first computer was DOS ver.5 I think, maybe 4. However, I try to forget bad things, and trying to figure out why a line command wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, is one of the the bad things. GUI is just fine thank you. :mrgreen:
rollin'
I remember that stuff, but I didn't really know the details. My first computer was DOS ver.5 I think, maybe 4. However, I try to forget bad things, and trying to figure out why a line command wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, is one of the the bad things. GUI is just fine thank you. :mrgreen:
rollin'
Interesting responses. We figured relatively few people used it.
To those that use it: would working with a 2D PDF be OK instead? It doesn't require the printer to have Alibre Design installed, is lightweight, and is very portable. I would also make the claim that every commercial printer in the universe, or at least on Earth, accepts PDF documents.
Print to file has been more difficult to implement than we anticipated. Microsoft calls out many of the severe limitations of the severely antiquated functionhere. It is likely not going to be implemented in AD 2011 based on the response here.
We are not talking about getting rid of making 2D PDFs - rather specific functionality in the Print dialog called "Print to File". You can still Print to PDF.
Due to our port it costs more than you might think. If it was 3 lines of code we wouldn't be asking
To those that use it: would working with a 2D PDF be OK instead? It doesn't require the printer to have Alibre Design installed, is lightweight, and is very portable. I would also make the claim that every commercial printer in the universe, or at least on Earth, accepts PDF documents.
Print to file has been more difficult to implement than we anticipated. Microsoft calls out many of the severe limitations of the severely antiquated functionhere. It is likely not going to be implemented in AD 2011 based on the response here.
bigseb said:
When you check on the "Print to File" option in the print dialog, your computer will act as if it is printing to your printer but instead of taking its voodoo magic and sending it to the printer, it sends it to a file that can be sent to the printer later. The format is the PRN format, is printer specific, and was most commonly used during the good old DOS days.
Hop
Senior Member
Max said:
Good riddance "print-to-file." I will remember you, but not too fondly.
Not being a programming whiz, I assumed that "print-to-file" was just a simple re-direction, to a specified file location, of output normally sent to the print spooler. But not having looked at the Windows API since 1989, I am sure some things have changed since then. The source of any Windows software expertise I might have acquired (mostly by osmosis I think) was provided almost entirely by reading the works of Charles Petzold http://www.charlespetzold.com/, who can write faster than I can read, and much faster than I can understand what I have read. He lost me somewhere around Windows 98.
I think very few AD users will truly miss the removal of the print-to-file functionality. As it has been noted in this thread, there are workarounds and alternatives that produce PDF files suitable for archived, delayed or remote printing just about anywhere, without worrying about printer or print driver compatibility issues. And with a gazillion-byte portable memory stick selling for just a few somalians, portability should not be a problem.
Hop
Max,
Sorry but I am a little confused.
Are you referring to an additional program like PDF Creator?
I recently bought a new Win 7 64 bit system and had to resort to buy Adobe Acrobat due to the fact that all of the PDF programs that I tried would not work or crash the system.
To date, the only program that will work on my system is Acrobat and to get a good quality print, I have to “print to file”.
Under the normal options in Acrobat, the tiff’s that I use come out with jagged lines. When I print to file I have additional options such as compression, etc.
Does Alibre have any plans of including a PDF printer with their software? (other than PDF Creator, etc)
Thank you
Sorry but I am a little confused.
Are you referring to an additional program like PDF Creator?
I recently bought a new Win 7 64 bit system and had to resort to buy Adobe Acrobat due to the fact that all of the PDF programs that I tried would not work or crash the system.
To date, the only program that will work on my system is Acrobat and to get a good quality print, I have to “print to file”.
Under the normal options in Acrobat, the tiff’s that I use come out with jagged lines. When I print to file I have additional options such as compression, etc.
Does Alibre have any plans of including a PDF printer with their software? (other than PDF Creator, etc)
Thank you