knowing if a printer is connected
Peter Brigham MD
pmbrig at gmail.com
Mon Nov 23 23:23:37 EST 2009
There is only that one entry in the ioreg output that contains
"IOUSBCompositeDevice" and that entry disappears if I unplug that
printer, so it's undoubtedly the listing for my laserjet. But there is
nothing in the ioreg listing that identifies the printer more
specifically, and thus there is no way of linking that entry to the
listing in my available printers just by looking at the names. (Not to
mention that the user can rename any printer in the system prefs
printer list to whatever s/he likes.)
I think I have found a solution that involves storing the printername
as the value of a customprop with key = the ioreg name -- do this the
first time the printer is encountered then use the customprop to set
the printername automatically after that. I'm testing it over the next
few days -- seems to be working so far -- and I will post the working
script (I hope) in a little while.
-- Peter
Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
On Nov 23, 2009, at 4:40 PM, Phil Davis wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> If you filter out all lines from "ioreg" output except ones that
> contain "IOUSBCompositeDevice", do you see the printer name in any
> line? If so, maybe available printer names could be matched to the
> device names in "IOUSBDevice" and "IOUSBCompositeDevice" records.
>
> Phil
>
>
>
> Peter Brigham MD wrote:
>> This worked for me on my home printer, and I had high hopes for it,
>> but if fails this morning here at work. The problem seems to be
>> that with some printers the listing from the ioreg call has little
>> relation to the name of the printer. For instance, my Brother
>> laserjet MFC 8220 (combo printer fax copier) has an ioreg listing of:
>>
>> +-o IOUSBCompositeDevice at fd100000 <class IOUSBDevice, registered,
>> matched, active, busy 0, retain 12>
>>
>> and there is no way of telling that this is a Brother 8220 or
>> relating it to the availablePrinters, not on the face of it, anyway.
>>
>> I'm working on a solution that will involve storing the ioreg name
>> of a given printer as a customprop "ioregListing[printerName]" More
>> to come. I'm determined to make this work as invisibly as possible.
>> It has long been a irritation for me that the system doesn't
>> automatically just send print jobs to the available printer.
>> There's no reason on earth why you should have to change printers
>> manually (after the first time you use one, of course). The system
>> knows what's plugged in, for goodness sake. [grrrr...]
>>
>> -- Peter
>>
>> Peter M. Brigham
>> pmbrig at gmail.com
>> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
>>
>>
>> On Nov 21, 2009, at 11:36 PM, Phil Davis wrote:
>>
>>> Everyone is doing it, so... here is what I came up with. Watch
>>> line wraps please. Hopefully the comments explain what the code is
>>> doing.
>>>
>>>
>>> on mouseUp
>>> answer UsbPrinterList()
>>> end mouseUp
>>>
>>>
>>> function UsbPrinterList
>>> -- set item delimiter
>>> set the itemDelimiter to tab
>>> -- make a list of all active USB I/O devices
>>> put shell("ioreg") into tActiveDeviceList
>>> filter tActiveDeviceList with "*IOUSBDevice*" -- remove all but
>>> USB devices from list
>>> replace "@" with tab in tActiveDeviceList -- isolate device name
>>> replace "+-o" with tab in tActiveDeviceList -- device name is item
>>> 2 of each line
>>> -- get all known printer names, whether active or not
>>> put the availablePrinters into tPrinterNames
>>> -- identify active USB printers in the USB device list
>>> put empty into tUsbPrinters
>>> repeat for each line tDeviceLine in tActiveDeviceList
>>> put word 1 to -1 of item 2 of tDeviceLine into tDeviceName --
>>> could be partial device name
>>> get tPrinterNames
>>> filter it with ("*" & tDeviceName & "*")
>>> if it = empty then next repeat -- device is not a printer
>>> -- USB device is a printer, so get full name
>>> repeat for each line tFoundPrinter in it
>>> put tFoundPrinter & cr after tUsbPrinters
>>> end repeat
>>> end repeat
>>> delete last char of tUsbPrinters -- trailing CR
>>> return tUsbPrinters
>>> end UsbPrinterList
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks -
>>> Phil Davis
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> JosepM wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> In English work, but in Spanish and others languages don't.
>>>>
>>>> The result of the shell command is:
>>>> destino por omision del sistema: HP_Photosmart_C4200_series
>>>>
>>>> So we must check for the ":" and get the printer name.
>>>>
>>>> set itemdel to ":"
>>>> put item 2 of shell("lpstat -d") into tDefaultPrinter
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> function getDefaultPrinter
>>>> put word 4 of shell("lpstat -d") into tDefaultPrinter
>>>> -- shell returns: system default destination: HP_DESKJET_845C
>>>> replace "_" with space in tDefaultPrinter
>>>> return tDefaultPrinter
>>>> end getDefaultPrinter
>>>>
>>>> The getActivePrinter get all the USB devices. In my case, my
>>>> LaCie disk, the
>>>> iPhone, the DataTraveler and the HP printer.. How to filter
>>>> between them?
>>>>
>>>> Salut,
>>>> Josep
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Phil Davis
>>>
>>> PDS Labs
>>> Professional Software Development
>>> http://pdslabs.net
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> use-revolution mailing list
>>> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
>>> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
>>> subscription preferences:
>>> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> use-revolution mailing list
>> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
>> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
>> subscription preferences:
>> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>>
>
> --
> Phil Davis
>
> PDS Labs
> Professional Software Development
> http://pdslabs.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
> subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
More information about the use-livecode
mailing list