Please test a DLL for me.

[hutch--]

A while ago one of the members reported that he could print to an older HP printer with QE but not to a later Win printer so I have a test piece here that contains a DLL that "should" work in this context and a small masm test piece to try it out. All the test piece does is read a command line specified file into memory and passes it as a zero terminated string to the test DLL.

If anyone who has a Win printer has the time, it would be most appreciated if you could test this DLL to see if it works in such a context. I only have a HP laser and it runs anything.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[shankle]

Hi Hutch,
I tried but got an error on---
     masm32rt.inc
Don't think I have it.

I have a HP Officejet all in one printer.

Sorry,
JPS

[hutch--]

Jack,

Its in the latest service pack which you can get from the forum web site. The EXE should run by itself though just to test it.

[Mark Jones]

Hi Hutch, I tried it with no command line parameters and windows responded with "Unable to locate Component - This application has failed to start because printfile.dll was not found."

Renaming the PRINT~1.DLL file to printfile.dll I get "Could not find command line file to print". Supplying a valid .txt filename started the printing process and fed a piece of paper, but printed nothing. XP SP1, HP DeskJet 722c.

[MichaelW]

I just tried printing out of QE for the first time and had no problems. I am running under Windows 2000 SP4, the printer is a 5-year old HP Deskjet 1000Cse, and the drivers are the certified drivers that were included with Windows 2000. Then I tried printing under Windows XP HE SP1 on a DeskJet 722C using the certified drivers that were included with Windows XP, and no problems. AFAIK both of these printers use HP's Printing Performance Architecture (PPA), so they are essentially dumb as bricks, depending on the drivers for everything.

I then tried the DLL test app. I had to change the DLL filename from SFN to LFN form before Windows could find it. After that I had no problems on either of the systems.

And the test app build OK after I changed the include and library filenames to LFN form.

[Mark Jones]

Aaaha, I goofed up the filename. It will print if I specify a valid file. :wink

It prints last page first, interesting. I find that hard to deal with in some contexts, since the first page may start on the "back" of the page if printing double-sided. But it works none-the-less. :)

Edit: wow, a fast "ALT-F, S" saves edited posts when using FireFox, cool. :)

[hutch--]

Thanks for being patient, I forgot that zipping it with PKZIP messed up the long file names (been working with the NT4 file manager in win2k for too long).  :bg

It looks like the DLL at least works OK.