Printer drivers have two ways to specify printer parameters: interactively, and through the manufacturer’s printer driver API. Normally, APPX uses the printer driver API. This is a mechanism for printer drivers to receive parameters that control printing from applications such as APPX. The printer driver then tells the printer how to print the passed document.
If you specify -interactive in your APPX Form Control, you will access the printer driver’s interactive specifications editor. This is similar to the one you see in Microsoft Word when you click File, Printer Setup. This display is not available if you run APPX through Client/Server, only if you are running appx.exe directly, from the server or through a mapped drive.
Often the manufacturer’s printer driver API interface is not as complete as the printer manufacturer’s interactive interface. For example, some ignore -form_id, which is used to control form length.
The following technique may give you a way to print a custom form length without having to use the -interactive screen on your APPX server:
1) Go into Windows and create a new printer.
2) When it gets to ‘Printer Manufacturer’, select ‘Generic’, ‘Text Only’.
3) Finish setting up the new printer.
4) Go back into Start; Settings; Printers, and edit the properties of this new printer.
5) Look at the ‘Font Selection’ tab. It allows you to enter hex codes for various pitches, Bold, and Underline. You may want to use a particular pitch for your custom form length.
6) Enter the control codes needed for your custom form length into one of these entries.
7) Define in APPX a Printer Control that passes a keyword that calls the pitch that you put your custom form control codes into.
The ‘Printer Commands’ tab also lets you send some hex codes to the printer.
If you want to pass control codes to your printer by any other method, you must use the -raw keyword in your Form Control, and embed the control codes in your Output Image.