I've done several application where printing was involved (Invoices,
packing slips, account statements, purchase orders, etc).. I generate PDFs
for this and either use Ghostscript to turn them into Postscript and print
them from the server or send the PDF (in one large file if needed) to the
user so they can print it.. It take a little while to get the PDF right the
first time but it's generally something you only have to do once.. I use PHP
a lot for the web apps and there are a few libraries available for PDF
creation (I've used both ClibPDf and PDFlib, they are both pretty nice)..
Good luck!
-Mitch
> Here's where the problem arises. You can create a really good looking
> invoice, in fact you can create a whole bunch of really good looking
> invoices. What you can't do with a web app is send a form feed to the
> printer! The only solution I've found so far is to create each invoice
> individually using javascript and each in their own window. Then you
> issue the print command to each window. Here's where another problem
> arises... Each print command also presents you with a print dialog, so
> if you have 100 invoices you have 100 windows and 100 print dialogs and
> you have to answer each dialog.
>
>
> There is an alternate method and that's to write a java app to do the
> printing and launch and feed it via the browser clicking feeding it a
> particular datafile (much like launching RealAudio or Acrobat or ...)
> Of course that really shoots the hell out of the nice invoice you can
> create in your web browser.
>
> So in that respect I'm still looking for a solution.
