Posted by Robert G Laurin (216.209.200.220) on October 28, 2004 at 14:13:10:
In Reply to: Re: Windows Printing posted by Brian Levantine on October 28, 2004 at 09:06:34:
So what is the advantage of using Windows printers then??
The beauty of Windows printing is that I can write a report that will print the same on any Windows printer, it be a Laser, Inkjet, deskjet or whatever else.
Today’s printers come with fewer and fewer resident fonts. They are less expensive because they rely on Windows to "feed" them the fonts they need.
Using multiple Laser printers from different vendors limits the likeliness of having the same "good-looking" font on all printers that I can universally use in my reports. Plus the fact that we are still using fix pitch fonts, for reports to line up properly, truly limits our choices. Comet's Windows printing is still not there to allow us the use of scalable fonts in multiple columns reports.
I did some experiments a few years ago and found that Windows actually generated a soft font that it downloaded to the printer when printing. With Comet, I have the feeling that these downloadable fonts are re-created and downloaded every time they are invoked in Comet. So, if I use a bigger/bolder font for the report title, all fonts must be re-created on every page. This is why I had asked you, if there was a possibility of grabbing the font handles to allow simultaneous use of more than one font size.
As far as printer performance, I'm pretty sure that if I take my report into MS WORDS and try printing it using the exact same font attributes (Font Size & Weight) that it will print much faster than anything I am currently getting now.
I truly want to use the Window's feature available to us in Comet but I find some of it is very frustrating to get working right.
And finally, my first question was: why is there no "Print to File" on the Printer dialog when using a type "?" printer as there is on the " File | Print " dialog in the cosw toolbar?