printing over html

[Fairlight]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2005 at 02:26:23PM -0700, Bob Rasmussen, the prominent pundit,
witicized:
> 
> Yes, we have a solution. BTW, it's the one that Alan Mazuti uses. You can
> see some examples starting at
>    http://www.anzio.com/products/wepo.htm
> Here is how it works.

And I've also seen that in action and found it to be quite slick.  filePro,
OneGate, and WEPO turn out to be a devastatingly cool combination.

> The webpage the user is viewing contains an ActiveX object, which is WePO,
> our Web Print Object. It typically appears as a button that says "Print".
> (The first time the user visits the page, they will be asked if they want
> to allow download/installation of WePO. They must say yes.)
> 
> Behind the scenes in that webpage are various parameter settings that
> control the behavior of WePO. One of these parameters, "MainURL",
> specifies the URL of the printfile.
> 
> When the user clicks the button, WePO fetches the file specified by
> MainURL from the indicated FTP, HTTP, or HTTPS site. That file can be
> static (already existing in that location), or it can be dynamically
> created when called for, using typical CGI techniques.

The one thing Bob doesn't mention, but which I've done a proof of concept
for with Alan at one point was that you can go one further.  The Print
button method is cool in and of itself.  However, I got it to the point
that if you wanted, you could -simultaneously- send a report to the printer
and an entirely different HTML document (or anything else a browser will
display) to the browser window.

So say you're using forms to add records, and every time you create one,
you want a shipping label.  Let's assume you're entering these in large
quantities.  You can emulate IUA mode by just recycling the new blank form
out to them for the next record, -at the same time- printing the label,
report, confirmation, or whatever to the printer.

I'm not sure if Alan ever rolled that into his final solution or if he
still needs a Round Tuit, but I did the proof of concept and all said, it
ended up being drop-dead simple.  I think I still have my demo file laying
about somewhere, actually.

I'd vouch for WEPO without hesitation.  Tres cool.  Very '1337.  And other
kudos and awards.

mark->