XP and Dos printing...

[karmic]

Have a client running custom dbase4. It was running on novell 6.5 and I just cut them over to windows 2003. The program runs file after a few little workarounds by the way.

I'm having a major time with a software paging system. Dbase offers the advantage of being able to send text messaging to cellular pagers. It does this by printing to a file on the server, and another peice of software on a separate computer processes the file and sends out the page.

When I try to send the file from dbase, I get the error "file not accessible" and the path...

In the prg file, this is what prints to file, but is not working...

SET DEVICE TO PRINT
SET PRINT ON
SET PRINTER TO FILE <path to file>

any ideas???


~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[jfp23]

Does the user have write rights to the path where the file is to be created?

 

[karmic]

yeppers, full rights to the path... it seems like a rights issue tho, just can't seem to wrap my head around it...


~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[jfp23]

Are you able to run the app directly on the Windows server? it may be a networking issue, if you can get it to work on the server directly that may help identify the cause.

 

[bcastner]

Try:

SET ALTERNATE TO path:filename
SET ALTERNATE ON

(Use ? and ?? to make the print statements)

SET ALTERNATE OFF && closes the file

 

[atua]

Have you tried "net use lpt1: \\server\printsharename"?

 

[karmic]

Thanks for the responses... It almost sounds like a rights issue with 2003 server, i always get the error "file not accessible". DBASE4 runs fine in windows 2003 otherwise and prints to a network printer but it's just this one file creation that won't work...

Any more suggestions?


~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[dbMark]

dBase for DOS can't use long file or folder names. Every folder in the specified path has to be 8.3 DOS-compatible format. And no spaces allowed! Could that be the problem?

 

[karmic]

Should have responded earlier...

Basically, printing is thru dbase, not dos itself. I had to set up DFS and map root for dbase to work properly.

As it turned out, the wrong version of dbase was being used, and the mapping with the correct version of dbase.exe turned out to be also incorrect.

Once all this was lined up, dbase came online and was able to print to file.

BTW, dbase4 runs beautifully on windows 2003 even tho this version was written specifically for novell.

Thanks.

~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~