Dev. 2K printing

Hi,

I need some help with my problem. I have developed a from using Oracle Forms Developer (Dev 2K ver. 2.0 (i.e.: Forms 5.0)) on a Windows 95 platform. The form serves as a sort of database browser with several user configurable options. I want to be able to send the information in the display window to the user’s printer. I would like to do this in the simplest and most direct way possible and not loose the new page breaks (form feeds).

As I understand it, I have two options which are:

1. Use the Windows 95 APIs for printing and text output. I do not have an in depth knowledge of Windows 95 but I do have an API book. I appears to me that I should be able to start a print job using the API ‘StartDoc’, output text to it, and use the API ‘EndDoc’ to start printing. I’m not sure if I would have my form feeds but I should have a printed report. My problem is that I have not been able to track down sufficient documentation as to what it would take to implement this solution.
2. Write a Visual Basic(5.0) program that is able to accept a file name as a command line argument and print the file. I would then have my form write out an ASCII file containing the information I want printed using the ‘TEXT_IO’ built in packages. The next step would be to use the form’s ‘HOST ’ procedure to call up the Visual Basic (VB) program and pass it the file name argument. My problem here is that I have just started dabbling with VB and have not been able to find out how to read command line arguments from within VB. Do I have to use one the data exchange methods?

Either way, this seems to be an awful lot of effort just to print something. It would seem a lot easier if I could just ‘HOST’ out a print command with a file name (i.e.: HOST(‘PRINT ‘ || <file_name>);). If there is such a command, I am ignorant of it.

Any help you can send my way would be much appreciated.

Thank you,
Erick Received on Tue Mar 03 1998 - 00:00:00 CST