Print Q
 

Ok here is my question if anyone wants to take a stab at it. It involves flash and most likely c++ or vb.net. Anyways there is a program called print2flash (www.print2flash.com). I was just wondering how does one program a piece of software that registers itself as a printer and then captures all the data. I guess to put it another way, I want to be able to do what this program does but just not output the document to flash. I just want to be able to capture the data and manipulate it in my own algorithm. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Re: Print Q
 

It's fairly simple in concept. You write a printer driver that, instead of translating the data into a form that a printer can understand, does whatever you want with it. And then, instead of sending aforementioned data to the printer, you... do whatever you want with it. A driver is just a type of program.

Of course, doing all that is more complex than I make it sound. Personally, I don't know much about creating drivers, but Googling for "C# printer driver" found some interesting stuff.

Re: Print Q
 

Ooble, you have to be like the greatest googler ever! How do you think of these things? Exactly what I was looking for, I just couldn't find those words. Thx

Re: Print Q
 

Ooble's talent is getting to the root of the problem and knowing what's a root and what's a limb. Once you know where the problem lies, Google is but a game of gofish.

Re: Print Q
 

It's simple. You don't know much about creating printer drivers either. Therefore, a managed approach would be best - most of the code will probably be encapsulated in nice little helper functions that way. I like C#, so I recommended that. Then I added what I was looking to code with it.

The best way to search for code examples and help is to stick the language name at the front of the Google search. Remember that.