Raw printing in windows

[mrwho]

Hello there!
I need one of the following :
- A printer driver that delivers the raw printjob without any modification to the printer
- Some way of bypassing the printer driver
Any clues?

Cheers!

[copymech]

Re: Raw printing in windows

most mfp machines (canon) have a feature called direct print, it is found in the rui (remote user interface). its is limited to specific file types, usually pdf, jpeg ect.

[mrwho]

I need it specifically in windows. And the generic text printer driver is no good because it strips the control characters and adds line feeds all over the place.

[gds64]

Re: Raw printing in windows

What about using lpr from the command line? It does depend on the device you're trying to print on, but it'll be something like:
lpr -S <printerIP> -P RAW -d <filepath\filename>

[mrwho]

Re: Raw printing in windows

What about using lpr from the command line? It does depend on the device you're trying to print on, but it'll be something like:
lpr -S <printerIP> -P RAW -d <filepath\filename>

Yep, that would work, but I'm not trying to print a specific file. I'm printing from an old application that generates its own escape characters, and if it goes through a driver, it messes everything. Even the generic text driver messes it up because it removes those escape characters. So I need some way of passing the raw print job onto the printer.

[gds64]

Re: Raw printing in windows

I thought that was the idea of the generic driver - the fact that it doesn't modify the job? Are you sure that the commands are being removed from the file, and not just ignored by the device - perhaps it can't handle them. Have you printed to file to check the existance of the codes?

What is the application and the OS?

[mrwho]

Re: Raw printing in windows

I thought that was the idea of the generic driver - the fact that it doesn't modify the job? Are you sure that the commands are being removed from the file, and not just ignored by the device - perhaps it can't handle them. Have you printed to file to check the existance of the codes?

What is the application and the OS?

I know for a fact that the printjob is being modified, by redirecting the print output to a file and opening it with a hex viewer.

[gds64]

Re: Raw printing in windows

I know for a fact that the printjob is being modified, by redirecting the print output to a file and opening it with a hex viewer.

So what happens if you lpr this file - does it print as expected?

[mrwho]

Re: Raw printing in windows

So what happens if you lpr this file - does it print as expected?

Nope.

[gds64]

Re: Raw printing in windows

Nope.

So if the codes exist within the file, and when lpr'd to the device the job still doesn't print correctly, it has to be the printer ignoring the request, rather than the codes being removed by a driver. Are the codes supported by the printer? It would be helpful to know the device and the codes that we're talking about.

[mrwho]

Re: Raw printing in windows

We're talking about an Epson formatted printjob that goes through an utility (PRTWIN) that transforms it into a language understandable by PCL printers.

That utility runs in windows, but the printjob originally comes from linux. So the flow is as follows:

Linux -> Windows (running PRTWIN) -> Printer

But the job, when passing from linux to windows, goes through the printer driver and gets modified, hence the need for a "raw passthrough".

As I type this, it is possible that I found an alternate way of doing this (which I'm still investigating, and I'll keep you posted) but still I'm curious as to whether it is possible to bypass the printer driver, or if there exists such a thing as a "raw" or "Passthrough" driver in windows.