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How to select a printer Turn on/off line numbers in source code. Switch to Orginial background IDE or DSP color Comment or reply to this aritlce/tip for discussion. Bookmark this article to my favorite article(s). Print this article
14-Jun-03
Category
Reporting /Printing
Language
Delphi 2.x
Views
121
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Publisher:
DSP, Administrator
Reference URL:
DKB
			Author: Julian Ziersch

PrinterIndex selects the current printer but also applies the properties of the 
currently active printer.

Answer:

Q: How to change the current printer ?

A: Printer.PrinterIndex := Printer.Printers.IndexOf('printername'); ??? 

The answer is certainly correct, but there is also a problem. This problem came up 
when developing a label printing program for DHL shipping labels using the form 
design and print library WPForm&Reporthttp://www.ziersch.com/index.html under 
Delphi 5: although the mentioned code selects the printer (this is good) it also 
applies the properties of the standard printer to the newly selected printer. So 
any preselected paper format is lost and the printer (in our case it was a big 
Siemens label printer) used a wrong paper format. 

Although it took a while to find this ot, the solution was not too difficult: 

The only possible solution for us was making a copy of the original printers.pas 
file and changing it. The new printer unit was linked to the project instead of the 
old one. (I know, such a change is unfortunate but there are no virtual methods in 
the TPrinter object so overriding of the method 'SetPrinterIndex' is not possible) 

This code shows you the necessary changes. The idea was to read out the properties 
of the newly selected printer before it is activated for printing. 
1   
2   procedure TWPFPrinter.SetPrinterIndex(Value: Integer);
3   var
4     DrvHandle: THandle;
5     ExtDevCaps: TFarProc;
6     DriverName: string;
7     ExtDevCode: Integer;
8     OutDevMode: PDevMode;
9     ADevice: array[0..256] of Char;
10    StubDevMode: TDeviceMode;
11  begin
12    CheckPrinting(False);
13    if (Value = -1) or (PrinterIndex = -1) then
14      SetToDefaultPrinter
15    else if (Value < 0) or (Value >= Printers.Count) then
16      RaiseError(SPrinterIndexError);
17    FPrinterIndex := Value;
18    FreeFonts;
19    SetState(psNoHandle);
20    // ------------------------------------------------------------------------
21    // Now we load the currently selected properties of the
22    // newly selected printer.
23    // otherwise the same 'DeviceMode' memory block to initialize the new printer
24    // ------------------------------------------------------------------------
25    if DeviceMode <> 0 then
26    begin
27      GlobalUnlock(DeviceMode);
28      GlobalFree(DeviceMode);
29      DeviceMode := 0;
30    end;
31    // ------------------------------------------------------------------------
32    // This code was copied from the SetPrinters procedure
33    // ------------------------------------------------------------------------
34    with TPrinterDevice(Printers.Objects[PrinterIndex]) do
35      StrCopy(ADevice, PChar(Device));
36    if OpenPrinter(ADevice, FPrinterHandle, nil) then
37    begin
38      if DeviceMode = 0 then // alloc new device mode block if one was not passed in
39      begin
40        DeviceMode := GlobalAlloc(GHND,
41          DocumentProperties(0, FPrinterHandle, ADevice, StubDevMode,
42          StubDevMode, 0));
43        if DeviceMode 0 then
44        begin
45          DevMode := GlobalLock(DeviceMode);
46          if DocumentProperties(0, FPrinterHandle, ADevice, DevMode^,
47            DevMode^, DM_OUT_BUFFER) < 0 then
48          begin
49            GlobalUnlock(DeviceMode);
50            GlobalFree(DeviceMode);
51            DeviceMode := 0;
52          end
53        end;
54      end;
55      if DeviceMode 0 then
56        SetPrinterCapabilities(DevMode^.dmFields);
57    end;
58  end;


			
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