Yeah, even from a native application, I'd consider writing directly to
the printer without checking in with the operating system to be a
badly-behaved application.  Even apps that try to be clever and
provide their own print dialog annoy me every time I have to print
something.  (Of course, I'm usually already a little annoyed at having
to print something in the first place ;)

But from a web app, this is just pretty much exactly wrong.  Let the
user have a print dialog.  It's ok.

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 18:16, Jeroen Janssen <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Here are a couple of thoughts on this:
>
> *) the 'printer dialog' is there for a reason, one of them being able
> to choose which printer to print to (i.e. if it is not the default),
> but also to make settings.
>   I could have a black/white printer as default, but maybe I also
> have a color printer somewhere. Should I change the default
> printerdriver (in windows) if I want to print color with your
> application?
>   Related to settings, this could be wanting to print duplex
> (2sided), staple settings (1, 2, none, etc), maybe I want a 2up/4up
> print, quality high/low, etc. depending on how someone wants their
> output.
>   I dont think there is any way to skip the printer dialog from the
> browser.
>   However, there are things you can do to make a webpage 'printer
> friendly' (there are some css things you can do different for
> information that you would like to be printable).
>
> *) generate postscript (pdf or pcl depending on your printer
> abilities) on the server side and just send ("lpr") it to the printer
> (if it supports this).
>   this completely "skips" the (local) printerdriver altogether.
>   the downside of this that you might not be able to address specific
> printer features (some things are standardized in postscript, but
> depending on the printer features it could require a special 'ticket'
> in front of the job). You would also need to know the hostname of the
> printer from the server, so what happens if a new printer is
> installed?
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Jeroen Janssen
>
> On 10 feb, 11:43, blackFLINT <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Please I need some help and a friend suggested using node.js. The
>> issue at hand is that I am writing a cakePHP application that uses
>> jquery for validations. I'm now at a deadlock however. I want to print
>> straight to the default printer without popping up the printer dialog
>> on the clientside browser. Does anyone have any idea how node can
>> help.
>>
>> Regards,
>> blackFLINT
>
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