Printing to Dot Matrix printers from Web Apps

Question

Hello,

I am not familiar with Dot Matrix printers but I have a customer with a WebApp that generates invoices, print checks, etc.. Currently they are printing directly from the server, meaning that the printer must be connected to the server or that the server needs a way to connect to the remote printer. As you can imagine this generates a lot of problems.

My first reaction was, generate a pdf doc. on the server and send it to the client so they can print it on whichever printer they have access to. But it turns out that many of his customers use dot matrix printers which do not support printing of PDF.

My question, is there any file format that all dot matrix printers can read? HTML, ASCII, etc... My customer insists that the only way to go is to have the server print directly from php which seems extremely odd to me.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Every printer should be able to print a plain ASCII file.

Answer 2

many of his customers use dot matrix printers which do not support printing of PDF

Nonsense - it's nothing to do with the printer - it's the printer driver which determines whether its capable. Most of the printers I use don't speak PDF (or postscript, or MSWord, or OpenOffice.....) but I can still print my documents on them. 25 years ago I could print graphics on 7 pin Paper Tigers (although I admit I'd have trouble finding a printer driver for one today). Do have a look at ghostscript. Most DMPs built in the last 10 years support Epson ESC/P2 emulation.

Alternatively you could use a text browser to create ascii from your html (e.g. lynx).

Hardly seems worth the effort to convert the text to PDF then back agains before printing - but ghostscript can be configured to use an ascii output device. So you can even print PDFs on daisywheel printers!

C.

Answer 3

I have the same problem. Okidata support told me to try IBM or Epson emulation mode.