Optimizing printing speed through Windx

[Cedric]

Hi all,

To give context, I have a customer who had their server locally and are now remote on a Cloud server.  They were used to quick print spooling, but now that they are remote, they started to complain.

I had a similar situation with another customer, but he wasn't printing to paper.  They print pretty much all to PDF, so in that case, it was an easy to fix by creating the entire PDF on the server and then transfer to the workstation and open. (instead of creating the pdf on the client machine)

I was thinking of doing the same to print (paper) via the client printer as well, but can't figure it out without third party applications.  The other solution I was thinking of is to stack all the print commands in one string and to send the string all at once via WINPRT to limit the number of communications between the server and the client, but this would probably require more work on my end and not sure how much speed I would really gain?

I was also thinking of spawining sessions for each print jobs to have them built simultaneously?

So, my question... Is there maybe a trick to print via WindX with faster speed? 

My scenario is that the user prints multiple documents at the same time. There's a wait time of maybe 2-3 seconds before each document starts to print.

[Cedric]

No one?   I think the method of sending combined "print" instructions to limit the number of "print" calls to the printer channel via WINPRT would probably work, but requires to rewrite a bunch of generic programs we use to print.  So I have opted for another method, which is to print to PDF on the server, transfer the PDF on the workstation and then send the pdf to printer via INVOKE and with a third party .exe that I've found on the web called PDFToPrinter.exe.   I know, I could've use the "system_help print" directive, but can't specify a printer with this which is important for our application.

That trick seemed to have fixed the issue and printing went from 12 seconds to 3 seconds.  It's pretty close than printing through VPN from server cups and "lp -d" which is basically the same concept.

[martinp]

That's a good solution too, I resorted to just printing to PDF and popping up the PDF and letting the user print.  From over a minute to seconds they didn't mind.

You can also try to group your documents into one PDF then one print instead of multiples.

I previously invoked acrobat and command line parameters:

invoke wait "[wdx]"+quo+EXE$+quo+" /h /n /t "+quo+F$+quo

F$ in this case was file

/n - Launch a new instance of Reader even if one is already open
/s - Don't show the splash screen
/o - Don't show the open file dialog
/h - Open as a minimized window
/p <filename> - Open and go straight to the print dialog
/t <filename> <printername> <drivername> <portname> - Print the file the specified printer.


exe depends on acrobat version etc... fun..

I assume you tried all the 'TU' and '+W'=1 and anything else... spawned session?  what vers of pvx.

[Cedric]

In this case, displaying the PDF and then print is not an option!  We are talking about a wholesaler that prints thousands of pick list/invoice per day from their delivery module.  If it takes them a few more clicks or seconds per print, they get annoyed and call me on speed dial! loL!