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Browse All TopicsI need to develop an application which uses the attached printer (not network printer) as an online printer where events occuring in the network are printed one line at a time as and when the event occurs. When I do this with printers that are NOT line printers (inkjet/laser), I find that once I write one line to the printer, the line gets printed at the top of the page and the whole page gets ejected (the rest of page is empty). The next event gets printed as one line in a the next page. This leads to wastage of stationery. Is there a way for me from Linux C programming to print one line to the printer, hold the printer from ejecting the page (like line printer), print next event on demand? I can gain exclusive access to the printer (if required). Thanks in advance
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by: DansDadUKPosted on 2009-03-27 at 05:11:07ID: 23999948
Almost certainly not.
Laser printers are page-base devices; once the printer thinks that a job/connection has finished, it flushes its buffers; you may be able to increase the 'time-out' period, but the maximum is likely to be only a few minutes.
Not so sure about inkjet printers; I think that they are basically page-based, but may print in 'bands'.
You'd have to buffer up your 'event lines', and print them when you have a page full; but this may defeat your object, which is presumably to have the 'event data' printed in 'real time'.