Hi.
I'm sorry to have come so late to this question, but I have some code that will do the job. It was not written by me originally. I received the code from another programmer's help site, but I can't remember which one. It works beautifully. Here is the project, which creates a dll. To do it yourself, select Create:/Project/Class Library (select Visual C# under project types).
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.IO;
namespace PrintRaw
{
public class RawFilePrint
{
// Structure and API declarions:
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Ansi)]
public class DOCINFOA
{
[MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)]
public string pDocName;
[MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)]
public string pOutputFile;
[MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)]
public string pDataType;
}
[DllImport("winspool.Drv", EntryPoint = "OpenPrinterA", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Ansi, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern bool OpenPrinter([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)] string szPrinter, out IntPtr hPrinter, IntPtr pd);
[DllImport("winspool.Drv", EntryPoint = "ClosePrinter", SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern bool ClosePrinter(IntPtr hPrinter);
[DllImport("winspool.Drv", EntryPoint = "StartDocPrinterA", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Ansi, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern bool StartDocPrinter(IntPtr hPrinter, Int32 level, [In, MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStruct)] DOCINFOA di);
[DllImport("winspool.Drv", EntryPoint = "EndDocPrinter", SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern bool EndDocPrinter(IntPtr hPrinter);
[DllImport("winspool.Drv", EntryPoint = "StartPagePrinter", SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern bool StartPagePrinter(IntPtr hPrinter);
[DllImport("winspool.Drv", EntryPoint = "EndPagePrinter", SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern bool EndPagePrinter(IntPtr hPrinter);
[DllImport("winspool.Drv", EntryPoint = "WritePrinter", SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
public static extern bool WritePrinter(IntPtr hPrinter, IntPtr pBytes, Int32 dwCount, out Int32 dwWritten);
// SendBytesToPrinter()
// When the function is given a printer name and an unmanaged array
// of bytes, the function sends those bytes to the print queue.
// Returns true on success, false on failure.
public static bool SendBytesToPrinter(string szPrinterName, IntPtr pBytes, Int32 dwCount)
{
Int32 dwError = 0, dwWritten = 0;
IntPtr hPrinter = new IntPtr(0);
DOCINFOA di = new DOCINFOA();
bool bSuccess = false; // Assume failure unless you specifically succeed.
di.pDocName = "RAW Document";
di.pDataType = "RAW";
if (OpenPrinter(szPrinterName.Normalize(), out hPrinter, IntPtr.Zero))
{
if (StartDocPrinter(hPrinter, 1, di))
{
if (StartPagePrinter(hPrinter))
{
bSuccess = WritePrinter(hPrinter, pBytes, dwCount, out dwWritten);
EndPagePrinter(hPrinter);
}
EndDocPrinter(hPrinter);
}
ClosePrinter(hPrinter);
}
if (!bSuccess)
{
dwError = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error();
}
return bSuccess;
}
public static bool SendFileToPrinter(string szPrinterName, string szFileName)
{
FileStream fs = new FileStream(szFileName, FileMode.Open);
BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(fs);
Byte[] bytes = new Byte[fs.Length];
bool bSuccess = false;
IntPtr pUnmanagedBytes = new IntPtr(0);
int nLength;
nLength = Convert.ToInt32(fs.Length);
bytes = br.ReadBytes(nLength);
pUnmanagedBytes = Marshal.AllocCoTaskMem(nLength);
Marshal.Copy(bytes, 0, pUnmanagedBytes, nLength);
bSuccess = SendBytesToPrinter(szPrinterName, pUnmanagedBytes, nLength);
Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(pUnmanagedBytes);
return bSuccess;
}
public static bool SendStringToPrinter(string szPrinterName, string szString)
{
IntPtr pBytes;
Int32 dwCount;
dwCount = szString.Length;
// Assume that the printer is expecting ANSI text, and then convert
// the string to ANSI text.
pBytes = Marshal.StringToCoTaskMemAnsi(szString);
SendBytesToPrinter(szPrinterName, pBytes, dwCount);
Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(pBytes);
return true;
}
}
}
Now, to use this code, add the resulting dll as a reference to your project, then call the functions as you need them. Here is some code where I used it, just today:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
namespace PclFontTest
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string szPrinterName = @"\\printserver\LaserJet 2420";
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(@"C:\Fonts\US20HP.FNT");
string line = (char)27 + "*c32545D";
line += sr.ReadToEnd();
line += (char)27 + "*c5F";
PrintRaw.RawFilePrint.SendStringToPrinter(szPrinterName, line);
}
}
}
This program reads a PCL Font from a file. It wraps the font with code to assign a font id of 32545 to it, then calls the dll function SendStringToPrinter.