WINDEV with redirected printer

[James Zukowski]

I've been trying to get data sent to a redirected Windows printer, but not fully succeeding. In these days of work-from-home for more, it's becoming essential.

The user (me, for now but preparing for others) connects via RDP to the office computer, which is connected to the server. Opening *WINPRT*/*WINDEV* for output displays the printer selection window, and "My OKI (redirected 1) on TS001" is selected. At this point, printing to a *WINPRT* selection works fine, and I can see the queue entries set up and processed on both the office and home PCs. But the *WINDEV* connection is never completed to the printer on my home computer; only the office PC queue entry is set up. Where the output goes is undetermined, but it doesn't get to my PC or the actual printer.

Is this how it's actually supposed to operate, or is there some option I'm missing? Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you! Be safe!

PxPlus 13.10 on Linux Redhat 5 with WindX via *nthost/*ntslave
(Upgrading shortly to PxPlus latest, Linux latest, likely SimpleCS)

[Mike King]

The issue is we rely on the Windows printer drivers to forward the output and I don't believe Windows RDP supports that.

What might work is if you output to a file then copy the file to the PC and print locally.

Ideally you should try and get rid of using *windev* and switch to using *WINPRT* which interfaces with the Windows printer drivers as I'm not certain if raw printer redirects will ever be supported via RDP.

[James Zukowski]

The create-copy-print process is what I've been doing -- manually -- to test the process. This creates a problem, though, for UnForm output to local lasers.

Unless I'm missing something.

[Allen Miglore]

Cirrusprint is our companion product to UnForm.  It could provide a solution for remote printing.  If you'd like to check it out, please contract us offline at our support address (which of course you know...)

[jasonc]

James,
I have come across this myself.  For me and my users, our problem is that our cheap home printers don't support the output sent to the printer.
Our Unform output is PCL5, which my home printer doesn't support.
To work around this, our users are printing to PDF on the RDP session.  From Adobe on the remote session, they then print to the "redirected" printer, which works fine.

I did work with another developer on this and he does have a laser printer at home that supports PCL5/6.  He was able to print directly to his printer from PxPlus, however, in order to do so, he had to set his printer up on his local PC to use the "HP Universal Printing PCL6" driver instead of the specific driver for his printer.
I haven't seen that with my own eyes, but fully trust what he told me.  I believe he was printing using *windev*, but I can't be positive.  My system does for the printer I was using and his system is set up very similarly.

I didn't pursue this any further because our users were content to print to PDF and then print from Adobe to their printer.
Hope that helps.  Good luck.

[James Zukowski]

Because I've got my home computer able to connect directly though the VPN to the server, having it print with a process that way works fine, too. It's just the RDP intercept that's causing the problems. And I don't think any of our normal user clients are set for direct-connect.

The other side of this is that we're still in the relatively early stages of migrating from character-based displays to graphical. Nomads panels with folders that have a lot of tabs, lists, etc. take longer to first display, due to the WindX back-and-forth. I've reduced those to a minimum, with "batched" loads instead of single-lines, but folks are still loathe to use the graphical programs in those situations (similar to our remote sites around the country). With the RDP connection to the PC in the main office, the server is right there, so response to those machines is FAST. The RDP updates are also fast to the remotes, so that's the preferred pathway at this time.

I'll explore some of the other options that have been presented, now that I know I'm not totally crazy with *WINDEV*.

Thanks for all your assistance.

Stay safe!