Getting the Network Fax Machine names ina Domain...

[fixthebug2003]

Hi,
Is thre a way we can write a programme to get a list of Fax and Printers in a Domain in a Network..so the user can pick up the Printer/Fax to Print/Fax?

Fixthebug2003

 

[Diancecht]

I'm afraid that needs a native implementation

Cheers.

Dian

 

[fixthebug2003]

Can you Elaborate a little more on that...what do you mean by that?

 

[Diancecht]

I mean that I don't think there's an standard cross-platform way to find faxes or network printers, that will depend on the OS level.

Cheers,

Dian

 

[sedj]

Well I'm not sure about faxes, but you can certainly look up available printers via the javax.print API.

Eg, this line looks up what your default printer is :

PrintService service = PrintServiceLookup.lookupDefaultPrintService();


You should have a look at this example :

http://javaalmanac.com/egs/javax.print/BasicPrint.html

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[fixthebug2003]

Well..if one can find the Printers then obviously we can find any hardware in the network..as long as the API's are there. Thats my understanding (Correct me if I am wrong).
Thanks.

 

[sedj]

Of course - but only if the Java APIs exist to do it. For example, while there may be a javax.print API to locate printers & do printing stuff, there is not a javax.fax package. So to do it, you will need to write your own - possibly using a native solution (ie C/C++) and then use JNI to plug that native code into your Java. In effect creating your own "fax API". Probably, you will need to use the javax.comm API to communicate with a fax machine over a serial port also, or again, write a native method.

Remember that the way the javax.print API accesses what printers exist (on Win32 in any case) is via native code anyhow, embedded in Sun's proprietry JRE code.

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[Diancecht]

Arghh, today is not my day.

Let me clarify my post, I think it leads to misunderstanding.

What I tried to say is I don't think there's an unique API to access the Windows concept of Fax/Printer as it appear on Control Panel that can be ported to another OS.

There are APIs even to send faxes, but they rely on platform dependent implementacions of Java APIs. In fact there's a java.fax package, but it's not standard.

Cheers.

Dian