Printer envelope sizes supported

[Charles Dietz]

I have been writing a program which prints envelope addresses. I can use the
printer dialog box while the program is running to determine which envelope sizes
are supported on my HP Laserjet 4L. And once I know them, I can use the DEVMODE
structure to call out a supported envelope size. But can anyone tell me how I
can code an enumeration of the supported sizes for any printer?

For example, my HP 4L supports less than half of those that are available. Other
printers might not support that many. I need to know which ones are supported
for any selected printer. I'm sure there is a way to do it, and I hope someone
out there has some ideas. I will appreciate any help offered.

[Lance Edmonds]

The way to do this is to use DeviceCapabilities() with the
%DC_PAPERS flag.

This should return a "list" of paper sizes but one thing I remember from the various books/articles I've read may not be good news for you:
Many printer drivers incorrectly report the paper sizes that they support - some return numbers that have no representation in the list of "known" paper sizes (see the equates in WIN32API.INC, or report wrong sizes altogether. The problem also is known to occur with the list of trays (paper-sources) reported by some drivers. The biggest issue is that these effects vary between drivers and platforms - some report much more accurately than others!

All of these details are covered in "Win32 Programming" (Rector/Newcomer) and "Print Programming in Windows (Jeff Potts). The Potts book is not value for money in my humble opinion, but it should help you with this problem. For my money, I'd look at the Rector/Newcomer book as it covers this stuff and a whole lot more besides.



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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Charles Dietz]

Thank you, Lance. DeviceCapabilities() was exactly what I was looking for.
And I will keep your warnings of its shortcomings in mind.

I have been on the verge of buying Rector/Newcomer for some time, but it
is a very expensive book and I haven't been able to find a discount, not
even from Amazon.com. Your recommendation of the book may just inspire me
to bite the bullet. Thanks again, Lance.


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