Printing and Spooler Issues

ACUCOBOL-GT includes extended support for printing under Windows. In addition to the basic print spooler access procedures described below, the WIN$PRINTER runtime library routine provides easy access to extended Windows print spooler capabilities. See the entry for "WIN$PRINTER" in ACUCOBOL-GT Appendices Guide > Appendix I. Rules for printer handling are illustrated in the ACUCOBOL-GT User's Guide > Compiler and Runtime > Filename Interpretation > Assigning Files to Printers.

Under Windows, you may print directly to the printer by defining PRINTER in the configuration file as "-D PRN". Be aware that this does not prevent other programs from printing at the same time and as a result you may get intermixed pages.

You may also print using the Windows spooler, even if your reports have embedded control codes. The spooler allows many programs to create print files at the same time, and also allows the user to do other tasks while the report is being printed.

Note: The configuration variable WIN_SPOOLER_PORT allows you to divert printer output to a file or port through the Windows print spooler. For more information, see ACUCOBOL-GT Appendices Guide > Appendix H of the ACUCOBOL-GT manual set.

Before you assign your print file to the Windows spooler, you must decide whether you want to control the format of each page directly (with embedded control codes) or whether you want the print spooler to format the pages.