Printer Switching

[datalink]

On a solution at a client site we have added a series of Dymo printers for receipts. Because they had a couple laying around from other uses and a couple new ones were added there is a mixture of these printers on the various client machines.

The Print step in the script that generates receipts indicates a Dymo 450 as the pinter. This works great if the client machine happens to have a 450 attached. If there is a 400 attached then the receipt is directed to the default printer, which in most cases is a standard HP printer.

Is there a way to use If statements to determine what sort of printer is attached to the client terminal and use different Print command based on what's attached to the client machine?

Is there a better more elegant solution?

Thanks in advance.

[dansmith65]

I haven't had to deal with this type of problem since FM8, so I'd also like to hear how others solve this issue.

I do know there are some printer switching plug-in's out there; I'm assuming that could solve your problem. Do a google search for it, or check this site: http://filemaker-plugins.com/

[datalink]

Bump.

[Ted S]

My employer also has a few Dymo Turbo style label printers and I was never able to get FM to work with them unless that was the only printer the workstation ever used, which isn't a realistic scenario.

I ended up buying 5 copies of the CHANGE PRINTER plugin from Production Computing. I try to avoid plugins for numerous reasons but in this case I just couldn't.

The plugin works as expected except it is a little bit slow to kick into gear and it isn't seamless. The user sees the print dialog boxes come up but they get filled-in and dismissed automatically. It operates kind of like a macro if you know what I mean.

The only thing I wasn't able to get working was the form (paper size) selection. Maybe there is something odd about the Dymo printers but the CCCP plugin wouldn't change label sizes. Ultimately this wasn't a problem for me because we use mostly one size but if you had two label printers on one machine with two different sized labels it could be a problem. Of course Productive Computing could always fix it I presume.