SDI app: Wait for printer

nobaq

Hello, In my application, I send a print command to my view from a (modal) dialog:

pView->OnCmdMsg(ID_FILE_PRINT, 0, 0, 0);

How can I wait until the printing process has been finished? Background: In my dialog I want to be able to print other data than loaded into the current view. For this purpose, I save the state of the current view, load another document, print it and afterthe document has finished printing I reload the old document again and close the dialog. Thank you and regards, Niki

nobaq

I have forgotten a very important issue: The view is a CHtmlView. So my view does not have an own printing mechanism

Iain Clarke Warrior Programmer

Printing is heavily abstracted in windows - this is one of the main selling points they had waaaaaaay back when. But that means you shove data at the print spooler - and you know when that is finished. But that may then shove data at some remote machine which may or may not complete then. That may then go to a fancy print system which could batch your print for late at night, for its own convenience. None of this gets fed back to you. You could do this:

while (1)
{
if (MessageBox (_T("Has the paper come out yet?"), MB_YESNO | MB_ICONQUESTION) == IDYES)
break;
}

Being slightly serious, the OnCmdMsg (ID_FILE_PRINT, 0, 0, 0) shouldn't return until it's finished its bit of the printing process. Iain.

nobaq

Hello and thank you for your answer! I do not want to check if the document has printed successfully but it should just be successfully appended to the queue (before the new document is loaded). I think I managed this (the following code is done in a modal dialog):

// pView is a pointer to my current view (CHtmlView)

// get currently loaded document
CString currentUrl = pView->GetLocationURL();
// load document to be printed
pView->Pall();
// wait until the document has loaded successfully
while(pView->GetReadyState() != READYSTATE_COMPLETE)
{
((CMyApp*)AfxGetApp())->Yeild();
}
// FIXXXME: IS THIS OPERATION REALLY BLOCKING?
pView->OnCmdMsg(ID_FILE_PRINT, 0, 0, 0);
// restore old document
pView->Navigate(currentUrl);
// return to my app
EndDialog(FALSE);

The OnCmdMsg(ID_FILE_PRINT) does nothing more than ExecWB(OLECMDID_PRINT,...) in the IWebBrowser2. And now my "backup question" is. You said: "Being slightly serious, the OnCmdMsg (ID_FILE_PRINT, 0, 0, 0) shouldn't return until it's finished its bit of the printing process." Are you sure that ExecWB(OLECMDID_PRINT,...) will block until the currently loaded document has been printed so that I can issue the next Navigate(...) call just afterwards? In my tests it works but I am not sure about this. Regards, Niki

Lost User

You could obtain a PRINTER_INFO_2[^] structure which contains the number of jobs in the printer que. The Status member should return PRINTER_STATUS_PRINTING while printing and PRINTER_STATUS_WAITING when finished. If you wanted to track individual print jobs you could use the JOB_INFO_1[^] or other associated print job structures to track the job. The Status member will return JOB_STATUS_PRINTED when the job has completed. It should be noted that older printers and/or port monitor drivers may always return JOB_STATUS_PRINTED information for job status. Your mileage may vary. Some documentation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/158828[^] Some sample code:

#include <winspool.h>
/************************************************************************************
	HANDLE OpenDefaultPrinter(ACCESS_MASK dwMask)
	Returns a HANDLE to the Default system printer. The caller must Close the HANDLE.
	-David Delaune 12-06-2006
*************************************************************************************/
HANDLE YourClass::OpenDefaultPrinter(ACCESS_MASK dwMask)
{
	HANDLE hPrinter = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE;
	PRINTER_DEFAULTS pDef;
	DWORD dwSize;

	ZeroMemory(&pDef, sizeof(pDef));
    GetDefaultPrinter(NULL, &dwSize);
    
	TCHAR* szBuffer = new TCHAR[dwSize];

	if(NULL != szBuffer)
	{
		if(GetDefaultPrinter(szBuffer, &dwSize))
		{
			pDef.DesiredAccess = dwMask;
			OpenPrinter(szBuffer, &hPrinter, &pDef);
		}
		delete szBuffer;
	}
	return hPrinter;
}

/************************************************************************************
	DWORD GetPrintQueCount()
	Returns the number of waiting print jobs in the Default printer que.
	-David Delaune 12-06-2006
*************************************************************************************/
DWORD YourClass::GetPrintQueCount()
{
	DWORD dwNeeded = NULL;
	PRINTER_INFO_2 *pInfo = NULL;
	DWORD dwRet = 0;

	HANDLE hPrinter = OpenDefaultPrinter();

	if(INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE !=

Iain Clarke Warrior Programmer

I confess I have not printed from an HtmlView, so take my logic with some skepticism. From the docs: Executes a command on an OLE object and returns the status of the command execution using the IOleCommandTarget interface. It does not say "queue up some thready thing". So S_OK, means the job is *done*. Iain.