[IUG] Setup system printer as print-to-file with automatic renaming?

[Cindy Harper <charper at mail dot colgate dot edu>]

Hi. There's about a 3% chance that some of you have dealt with this problem and have a workaround, so I'll ask:

We're setting up to use the III inventory module in the text-based (character-based) system to perform an inventory and shelf-reading. Note: we looked into barcode Circa, but it doesn't yet have the shelf-reading feature. I'm looking forward to someone else being the development partner on that.

We're using Metrologic MS9535-5M's to collect the barcodes, then uploading using Mil Offline Circ and continuing to process using PuTTY.  Once we have the results of the Compare to Shelflist, I want to print those results off to a file.  So I started with passthrough printing to the FILE: port.  First problem:  passthrough printing stops the passthrough process and restarts it for every page, so you end up with multiple files per result set. Second: the FILE: port in Windows wants you to manually name the file every time.  That's cumbersome.

So I talked to the Help Desk, and they encouraged me to look into printing to a system printer, and then using something like PrintWizard to capture to a file.  Rather than follow that option straight away, I looked into (via Google) print-to-file redirectors and port monitors.  The best option I ran into there was LEADTools ePrint 5 (LEADTOOLS.com). But after I determined that that could ingest my files, redirect them to text files and automatically rename them, I found that if I share the printer, it's not shared as a TCP LPR port so that III can talk to it as a system printer.

So I briefly looked at the PrintWizard manual for info on printing to a text file, but didn't find anything about that. Does anyone know if this can be done? (Bob R., I know you monitor this list...)  PrintWizard can listen as a TCP LPR port. (I think it's the LPR protocol that I need, but I'm not sure about that.)

Anyone have any ideas? TIA.



Cindy Harper, Systems Librarian
Case Library & Geyer Center for Information Technology
Colgate University, Hamilton NY 13346
charper at colgate dot edu
315-228-7363