Printing to a USB Printer

[Clay Larson]

Using QB64, is there anyway to control the font printed on a USB printer?

[Petr]

Hi.
Yes. Use _LOADFONT, _FONT, print it to screen (as preview) with white background and then use _PRINTIMAGE for printing this screen to paper. Is possible using virtual (unvisible) screens.

[Pete]

I'd probably experiment with _HIDESCREEN to see if your method would still work, and restore the screen after a suitable delay, programmed for the length of the document to be printed.

Another way is to slave it out to Wordpad. Write something in Wordpad in the font style and size you want to print. Save it and open it in Notepad. The .rtf Wordpad file will open and show the font formatting. Now all you have to do is write that formatting info to a file. When you are ready to print from your program, you open that file, input the formatting, and write it to a temporary file followed by the text your program needs to print, and any closing formatting. Save the temporary file and do a SHELL printer command to Wordpad for that file: SHELL _HIDE _DONTWAIT "wordpad /min /p myfile.tmp"

Here is an example I wrote for another forum member: https://www.qb64.org/forum/index.php?topic=979.msg101797#msg101797

Pete

[FellippeHeitor]

It’s not a matter of using _HIDESCREEN. The thing is that you can use a new image in memory without having to display it so your program can continue running and you can generate the image to print without showing it.

[Pete]

That reminds me of PCOPY. Ah, the good ol' days!

Pete :)

[FellippeHeitor]

That reminds me of PCOPY. Ah, the good ol' days!

Pete :)

Same idea indeed ☺️

[Clay Larson]

Thanks for everyone's responses.  From Peter's sample code, I can see how you could control the printed output.  It is a little kludgy.  You'd certainly want to hide this sausage making.  To this end, I couldn't find the _HIDESCREEN procedure.

[Pete]

My bad. Blame it on old-age dyslexia. Try _SCREENHIDE. Oh, if you try it, remember to redisplay the screen, or end the program with SYSTEM, otherwise the instance of the exe will not terminate, and you'll have to terminate your QB64 exe it with Task Manager. Good luck!

eteP

[Petr]

Better is real source code, instead of general bullshit...

Code: QB64: [Select]

1. 'printing example
2. 'A4 paper size is 210x297 mm. So ratio is 1.414258571  Hmmm
3.  
4. Ratio = 297 / 210
5. RAT = 1000
6.  
7.  
8. PaperWidth = RAT
9. PaperHeight = RAT / Ratio
10. 'This is for portrait printing. If you want to print landscape, flip it.
11.  
12.  
13. Paper& = _NEWIMAGE(PaperWidth, PaperHeight, 32)
14. _DEST Paper&
15. CLS , &HFFFFFFFF 'the same as CLS, _RGBA32(255, 255, 255, 255)    <-create white background for save cartridge
16. DIM font(14) AS LONG
17. FOR Sizes = 1 TO 30 STEP 2
18.     COLOR _RGB32(Sizes * 7, 0, 255 - 7 * Sizes)
19.     font(i) = _LOADFONT("lbrite.ttf", Sizes, "bold")
20.     _FONT font(i), Paper&
21.     _PRINTMODE _KEEPBACKGROUND , Paper&
22.     _PRINTSTRING (50, 50 + _FONTHEIGHT(font(i)) * i), "This is text printed with Calibri font in size" + STR$(Sizes)
23.     i = i + 1
24. NEXT Sizes
25. _DEST 0
26.  
27.  
28.  
29.  
30. INPUT "View page before print? [Y/N]"; m$
31. SELECT CASE UCASE$(m$)
32.     CASE "Y": SCREEN Paper&: SLEEP
33. END SELECT
34.  
35. SCREEN 0 'first screen (program is in text mode, but Paper screen is in graphic mode)
36. INPUT "Press P for print, or other key for end"; m$
37. IF UCASE$(m$) = "P" THEN _PRINTIMAGE Paper&
38.  
39. 'Of course, for printing, it is also necessary to check with _PRINTWIDTH whether the printing is no longer in the X axis outside the printable area.
40. '_PRINTIMAGE supports color printing, including images.
41.  
42.  
43.  
44.  
45. 'erase memory!
46. _FREEIMAGE Paper& '                 first kill screen contains used fonts,
47. FOR KillFonts = 0 TO 14 '           then kill used fonts for free memory.
48.     _FREEFONT font(KillFonts)
49. NEXT
50.  
51.  
52. SYSTEM
53.  

[Pete]

Hey, I'm a navy man. I never post "general" bullshit, only "admirable" bullshit. :D

Well, kidding aside, and yes, I know, the proper spelling is admiral for the navy rank, the routine works as advertised.

One Note: The user might need to include the font path. I use Windows, and I don't keep any fonts in my local QB64 directory, so I changed the _LOADFONT line to: c:\windows\fonts\lucon.ttf and the screen print line from "Calibre" to "Lucinda Console". It printed perfectly.

Nice routine, my friend!

Pete

[Petr]

Hi Pete,
I meant my first own post :)

Thank you. :)

[Pete]

Yes, I know you did. I should have worded it as such, but I just couldn't resist rushing to post that horrible pun. I have to have my sense of humor in this world, because I figure in the next life, laughing at God won't end well...

Pete