Please help if you can....

I have a PHP developer writing a store order system for my company. After an order is entered, we want to print a receipt. However, our developer tells me he cannot print to the USB printer we provided for him. He says his routine works perfectly with his parallel printer at work just fine.

Does anyone know if printing to a USB printer is possible?

Thanks,
Robert

    My developer said he did indeed look there. Thanks for the suggestion though....

    Robert

      Interesting... I am not aware of any limitation regarding parallel port vs. USB, but I haven't done any PHP development that required printing.

      The question is... is the comparison being done on the same machine? If we're talking about two different servers, then there could be other factors. If I'm not mistaken, you have to enable the php_printer.dll in php.ini, and it only works on Windows machines. So, if you're on a Linux box, you might be out of luck.

      Be sure to read the user comments at the bottom of that page. They might have some useful information as well.

      One last possibility I can think of may be to use a USB-parallel converter, and use the printer with the parallel port. At the very least, if you get one of these converters, you can test the theory about parallel printing working and not USB.

      Good Luck!

        Thanks Buzz....

        The tests were done on two separate computers. The one with the USB attached printer is running WinXP Pro. Not sure what the other computer was running as that was at my developer's site.

        I'll have him try the USB-parallel converter and see if that works.

        Thanks for the tip.

        Robert

          My first guess would be that he doesn't have the php_printer.dll enabled in php.ini. I'd check that first...

            I'll have him look at that.

            Meanwhile, do you know of a place to purchase a parallel to USB adapter cable? I can find USB to parallel adapters but haven't had any luck finding the others.

            Thanks,
            Robert

              7 days later

              Well...my programmer said he received an email from the guy wrote the printer extension for php. The guy said the extension was never tested on usb printers.

              So...anyone with an idea how to print from within php using another lanquage (perl, .net, etc.) please let me know.

              Thanks,
              Robert

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