Me and my friend had built an online ordering application using PHP, XML and FLASH. The application in question was to allow
a restaurant to take orders from the internet and print them in
the kitchen.
We Ad Hoc'd together the application without really knowing
if the components we were using were right for the job. It turns out that a whole bunch of other restuarants are now interested in this.
The system works just fine. The PHP script generates an XML file w/ the menu and the Flash (movie/script/application) gets that
XML file, and in turn, allows the user to select the dishes he/she wants, the quanity, add comments, and send the order as an XML file. Once the xml file gets sent back to the PHP script, it gets printed out using an ugly LPD command.
Looking back on it now, I'm thinking there must have been a
better way to do this printing (the server was in the kitchen, so using LPD was not to much of a problem). I wanted to know if there was a way to use IPP so that the printer could be connected to a machine w/ broadband in the kitchen / store, while the website was hosted elsewhere. (I have some nightmare maintenance stories, due to cooks deciding to check their lotto numbers w/ the in kitchen server).
I googled as much information as I could about IPP and CUPS, but I can't seem to find anything that is of use. I'm under the impression that if I wanted to print using IPP, CUPS simply has to know where the machine is located, with only a slightly modified
command line being executed from my script.
The machines in question would most likely be running windows,
as the clients existing POS runs on windows. I went to www.pwg.org and saw that there was a Microsoft Internet Printing Services download available, so I'm hoping I can somehow set up a way to print from a webserver to the windows machine using the windows machine as an IPP server and CUPS as a client -- does that make any sense?)
If anyone out there has any suggestions or advice / tips it would be appreciated.
Thanks,
xonic.
