How to Print to Printer from g++ program?
As a physicist I wrote large programs in Pascal before retiring in 1994
but nothing since until last week. I thought of a problem I wanted to
solve, read up on C++ and got my program working with only a few
struggles with syntax but how to write directly to the printer has
eluded me. I could open a disk file, write the output to disk and then
print the file. This would get the job done but this seems awkward. My
references suggested redirection so I piped the console output to the
printer. My poor old laser printer went wild and I had shut the system
down - the only way I know to flush the printer buffer is to re-boot.
When I re-booted, the printer then spit out a perfect copy of the
console output. There was also a statement in the references to the
effect that a printer is just another file system. Perhaps it is as
simple as ofstream out_file ("/dev/lpt0"); ? But what if the printer
talks back? I know when I wrote those Pascal programs I distributed
them to people with different printers. The programs could check
printer capabilities and print excellent graphs if they found a
postscript printer. I haven't the foggiest recollection of how I
programed this.
If this question is regarded as wildly off target for this list, for the
record I tried a Google search for c++ forum and found essentially the
same question posted last December at cittoolbox.com. There were no
responses.
Tom George
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