Paper Size

[klamerus]

Okay,

The experts have helped me a lot so far. I'm hoping they can help with this. We are turning PDF documents into PCL via the Adobe PDF Libraries. Through these we print to a PCL printer driver that we've installed - with the parameters to save to a file (vs. actually print).

We PCL great for A size documents, but we're finding that A4 size are being cropped to A size. Clearly, the libraries aren't informing the printer driver of the size of the paper to render to.

Is there any way to configure the printer driver (any printer driver) so that it always creates output that would be A4 (or any size) in the hope that this will get us the A4 PCL documents we need?

 

[klamerus]

Bit of a typo. I meant that this works great for creating A sized PCL documents, but we're having issues with A4 PCL documents.

Sometimes I get ahead of myself in typing.

 

[jmanj]

Since you have mentioned output to files, I assumed you mean dealing with .prn files which can be portable and printed to any printer that is compatible with the original printer driver used. What I have done in the past is associate any .prn files with a .bat file whose only function is to sent that .prn file to the printer. In the .bat file you can also include any printer command to the printer before sending the .prn file to the printer.

How to associate the .prn file to the .bat file? You can search the internet about creating a .prn files and there is a list of steps on how to do it.

It has been many years since I worked with dos commands but I'm sure there are lots of help in the internet.

 

[klamerus]

Actually no, we're not doing anything with prn files.

The Adobe PDF Libraries will print directly to a printer, but with further parameters it passes through to that printer to not print the spool file that it would otherwise send directly to the printer. This is similar to what you can do in a GUI, where you can send a print job to a file (you provide the name).

That's the file we're capturing, which is a PCL file. We also use this method to create PostScript (PS) files.

 

[jmanj]

It does not matter if it is a .prn or whatever files. The idea is to associate any file to the .bat file that will send it to the printer. Once you click the file it will automatically send it to the printer by the .bat file. A lot of my client are using this method because of different documents to be printed. I put a printer command script in the .bat file before sending the files to printer then another printer command to reset to it's original settings. An example would something like below:

PRINTFILE.bat :

ECHO OFF
PCL Command (Size, etc)
PCL Command

@COPY %1 LPT1

PCL command (reset)

 

[klamerus]

I don't believe you get the point of my posting at all. We have no issue whatsoever with sending files to printers The Adobe PDF Libraries are doing that for us and they always have.

The problem is that the printer is NOT creating PCL files properly, and had not until a day or two ago found any tell of making it do so.

Telling a printer that we're giving it an A4 document after the fact is of no value if the PCL itself has already been created with only a subset of the A4 sized input on it.

The solution we've found is to set the default page size property for the printer driver to A4. We've found that by doing so, we've convinced the printer driver to render into an A4 sized region. Having done this we're having no issues printing the file later.