Create a Generic/Text Printer Driver in C#

Question

How can we create a generic/Text Printer Driver in C#?

A code sample woul be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can't create printer drivers in a .NET language.  You can however output raw print commands directly to the printer, bypassing the driver.  Check this KB article for the P/Invoke required.

Answer 2

There is something else that I want to do.

Actually I want to be capable to send a PrintDocument to a Serial Print.

For doing that I send PrintDocument to a File ( using the Generic/Text driver ) and then  the file is sent to a serial printer.

Answer 3

Why send it to a file first?  Just configure the printer to send output to a serial port directly.  If the file is a requirement, you could print it by using Process.Start("print /d:COM1 path").  Or do it yourself with the .NET 2.0 SerialPort class.

Answer 4

I am not clear enough, I suppose.

The output is a PrintDocument.

The Printer is an Epson  POS COM Printer , for which I didn't find any drivers. (XP or newer). That is the main problem in fact.

Good. Now the PrintDocument I have ( which allows me a nice preview if necessary), cannot be sent directly to the serial printer.

Therefore I had to use that Generic/Text driver to send the PrintDocument to a text file, first. And only afterwards to use SerialPort class for printing.

 

If, on the other hand, I set the port for the printer driver directly to COM , I have 2 issues.

1. The printing stops after it reaches the buffer size. I wasn't capable to manage that. Which I could controle programmatically using CtsHolding property with my SerialPort object 

2. My application uses a third party EXE that also uses the serial port and it finds it inaccesible because of the Printer Driver.

 

Answer 5

You cannot use PrintDocument if you don't have a driver.  You'll have to generate the printer escape codes yourself.  You cannot open a serial port that is in use by another process.  That would be a show-stopper problem I'd say.

Answer 6

Exactly. That's why I create/use a generic/text printer driver.

You cannot open a serial port that is in use by another process. - Right again, that's why I use that text file solution.

Thanks for confirming me what I was thinking.