Send a preformated file to any printer
Q. How can I send a preformated file to a printer "as is". If I use Printer.Print then things like ESC get converted to a box or whatever chr$(27) is in the current font. A.I'm using following code to send AutoCAD .plt-files to my printer, and it works ok for me. "Soren Staun Jorgensen"
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AI Summary: This codebase represents a historical implementation of the logic described in the metadata. Our preservation engine analyzes the structure to provide context for modern developers.
Source Code
Public Sub SendFileToPrinter()
Dim FileName As String
Dim s As Long
Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To frmMain.List.ListCount - 1
If frmMain.List.Selected(i) Then
FileName = CurFolder & "\" & frmFileList.File.List(i)
s = SendToPort(FileName, CurPrnPort, vbNull)
frmMain.List.Selected(i) = False
End If
Next i
End Sub
Public Function SendToPort(sFileName$, sPortName$, lPltFailed&)
Dim s As Long
s = CopyFile(sFileName, sPortName, lPltFailed)
End Function
<table width="97%" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="3" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"> <p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Opacity
- Now you see it.., now you don't..</strong></font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top"> <p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">VB.Net
has exposed some new properties for us to play with. One of them is "opacity".
Opacity is that wonderful abilty to set the transparency of an object.
The first time I saw form opacity or form transpanency was on a box running
Linux. It had a couple of windows open and you could see through them
to the form underneath and to the wall paper. I thought this was very
cool. We've all seen applications that have semi-transparent forms that
you can see through and there are quite a few good examples of form opacity
or transparency on PSC that you might want to take a look at.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In this article
we will create a form that, when closed, will adjust it's opacity over
time and fade away. It's a neat effect that has gotten some milage in
the past and will undoubtedly get more in the future. Especially now that
it's so easy to do.<br>
We will also look at the <font color="#000000">Closing Event </font> and
a neat new coding feature that will allow us to streamline our code.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So, let's
get started.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br>
</font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Building
the interface</strong></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Let's begin
by placing a label on our form. This really serves no purpose other than
to show an additional control on the form with some text that will change
as we press the button we will create. <br>
On the toolbar locate the label control and drag and draw the label where
you want it on the form. We'll go to the property inspector and change
the name property of the label to "lblPrompt".<br>
At this point you will notice that the new name that we entered for the
label is in bold text. This is because it is no longer the default property
value. If you change any of the property values they will become bold.
This makes it easy to glance at the property inspector and see what you
have changed.<br>
In the text property let's add some text. The text we'll add is "Just
click the button below and watch me go!". We will change this later
in the button Event Handler.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now let's
add a button to the form. <br>
Find the button control in the toolbox and drag and draw it on the form
where you want it. In the property inspector set the name property to
"btnExit" and the text property to "E&xit". This
will work the same as it has before in VB and put an underscore under
the "x" and allow the keystroke alt+x to activate the button.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The last
thing we'll add is a timer. <br>
Again go to the toolbox and locate the timer. When you click on the timer
and drag it on the form you will notice that it doesn't appear on the
form as it used to in earlier versions of VB, but instead it will appear
below the form in another window. That's because the timer is not a control
as in the past but is now called a "component", and the window
it appears in is the "component tray". If we click on the timer
componet you'll see that the properties display in the property inspector.
We are interested in two properites. The "interval" and the
"enabled" properties.<br>
The interval property defaults to 100, or 100 miliseconds, or 1/10th of
a second.<br>
The enabled property defaults to False, meaning that the timer is not
enabled or counting until we set this property to True.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br>
</font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#3399FF"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong><font color="#000000"><em><font color="#FFFFFF">
Something New!</font></em></font></strong></font></td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#FFDFBF">
<td valign="top" bgcolor="#FFDFBF"> <p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>If
you look under the text property you will see a property called "TextAlign".
By clicking on the value box you get a graphical representation that will
allow you to align the text to 9 different places on the button. The default
is Middle Center, and for right now we'll leave it at the default value.</strong></font></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Now
let's look at some code</strong></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top"> <p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Double
click on the Exit button.<br>
Like before it will take you to the Sub proceedure for the Click Event.
However, you'll notice something a little different.</font></p>
<p> <font color="#0000FF" size="2">Private Sub</font><font size="2"> btnExit_Click(<font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
sender <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.Object, <font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.EventArgs) <font color="#0000FF">Handles</font>
btnExit.Click<br>
<br>
<font color="#0000FF">End Sub</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">VB.Net
has automatically created a Private Sub Proceedure for us and placed two
parameters into the proceedure that we weren't used to seeing before.
One is "sender" and the other is "e".<br>
The name of the Sub, </font><font color="#000000" size="3"><strong>btnExit_Click</strong></font><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">,
is automatically assigned by VB.Net from the property we set earlier in
the properties inspector when we renamed the button. However, unlike previous
versions of VB we don't have to leave this name as it was assigned by
the IDE. You can name it anything because the Sub name isn't what defines
the event. The </font><font color="#0000FF" size="3"><strong>Handles</strong></font><strong><font color="#000000" size="3">
btnExit.Click</font></strong><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
argument is what defines the event. This tells VB.Net specifically what
event the code is going to handle.<br>
The first parameter, </font><font color="#0000FF" size="3"><strong>ByVal</strong></font><strong><font color="#000000" size="3">
sender <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.Object, </font></strong><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">tells
us who fired this event or who the sender of this event was as a System.Object.
System.Object is similar to a variant in VB6 in that it can contain anything.
It refers back to an Object in the System class. In this case the sender
object was our button, btnExit.<br>
The second parameter, </font><font color="#0000FF" size="3"><strong>ByVal</strong></font><strong><font color="#000000" size="3">
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.EventArgs</font></strong><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">,
passes information that might need to be processed for this particular
event. We aren't passing any additional information for this event so
we'll just ignor it for now, but keep in mind what it does and why it's
there. </font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The
code we'll add to this proceedure is;<br>
</font><font color="#000000" size="3"><strong><font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Close()
<br>
</strong><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">You
won't need to add the parenthisis after "Close". VB.Net will
do that for you. Like in VB6 this will call the the method, Close(), for
the form object, Me. </font></font></p>
<p><font color="#0000FF" size="2">Private Sub</font><font size="2"> btnExit_Click(<font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
sender <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.Object, <font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.EventArgs) <font color="#0000FF">Handles</font>
btnExit.Click<br>
<font color="#0000FF"> Me</font>.Close()<br>
<font color="#0000FF">End Sub</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="3"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">If
we were to run the application now what would happen is when we clicked
on the button on our form the form would close and the application would
end. But we want the form to fade away as it closes. To do this we'll
need to add some code in the timer event handler. The code we will add
will set the new form level property "Opacity". The values we
will use are 1 and 0. (1 for visable and 0 for transparent)</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Timer
Event Handler<br>
</strong>In the component tray double click on the timer component. This
will take you to the code for the timer event handler. </font></p>
<p><font color="#0000FF" size="2">Private Sub</font><font size="2"> Timer1_Tick(<font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
sender <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.Object, <font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.EventArgs) <font color="#0000FF">Handles</font>
Timer1.Tick<br>
<br>
<font color="#0000FF">End Sub</font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The
timer event handler looks pretty much like the button event handler we
just reviewed in that it also has the same two parameters, "sender"
and "e", but this event handles the </font><font color="#000000" size="3"><strong>Timer1.Tick</strong></font><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
event. This tick event is the interval that we saw in the properties inspector
that was set to 100. When this timer is enabled the tick event will fire
off every 1/10th of a second (10 times a second).</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">What we want
to do is set the opacity property to decrease in opacity everytime the
tick event fires off until the form is totally transparent and then exit
the program. To do this we'll need to set a value that we will decrease,
or decrement, the opacity property value with. In the past we have done
this with a statement that looked something like this;</font></p>
<p><font size="3"><strong><font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Opacity = <font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Opacity
- 0.1</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This would
take the value of Opacity and decrease it by 0.1. So if the timer interval
is 100 then the opacity value would decrement from 1 to 0, or from visable
to totally transparent in 1 second. If we set the decrement value to 0.05
then it would decrement from 1 to 0 in 2 seconds.</font></p>
<p> </p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#3399FF"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong><em> <font color="#FFFFFF">Something
New! </font></em></strong></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" bgcolor="#FFDFBF"> <p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>However,
VB.Net has some new features that allow us to write less code to do the
same thing. Instead of using the code above we can simply write;<br>
</strong></font><strong><font size="3"><font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Opacity
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">-=</font> 0.1<br>
</font></strong><strong><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This
will decrement the property value exactly the same way as above. Pretty
nifty huh!?!</font></strong></p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now that
we have a decrement value we need to make sure that we don't try to go
beyond the lower value of 0. This we can do with a simple "if"
statement.</font></p>
<p><font size="3"><strong><font color="#0000FF">If</font> <font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Opacity
= 0 <font color="#0000FF">Then</font><br>
<font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Close()<br>
<font color="#0000FF">End If</font></strong></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This
just says that if the value of the property opacity is equal to 0 then
close the form. So our timer event handler code should now look like this;</font></p>
<p><font color="#0000FF" size="2">Private Sub</font><font size="2"> Timer1_Tick(<font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
sender <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.Object, <font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.EventArgs) <font color="#0000FF">Handles</font>
Timer1.Tick</font><font size="2"><br>
<font color="#0000FF"> Me</font>.Opacity -= 0.1<font color="#009900" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
'Look at this, we are decrementing the opacity property</font></font></p>
<p> <font color="#009900" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">'Now
let's check to see if the opacity has gone from 1 to 0 yet.</font><font size="2"><br>
<font color="#0000FF">If Me</font>.Opacity
= 0 <font color="#0000FF">Then</font><font color="#009900"> <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 'If
it is then</font></font><br>
<font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Close()<br>
<font color="#0000FF"> End If </font><br>
<font color="#0000FF">End Sub</font></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now we have
written the code for the button and the code for the timer. But we haven't
enabled our timer so that it can start firing off the Timer1.Tick event
handler. We could go back and place it in our button event handler, but
what happens if someone closes the application by clicking on the x on
the top of the form? Or what if they pressed the keys alt+F4? The program
will close, but it won't fade away like we want it to. To get it to fade
away no matter what the user does to close the program we will have to
place some code in the event that fires when the program closes.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>The
Closing Event Handler<br>
</strong>In VB6 when you wanted to access form level events you would
go to the left drop down and select "Form1", or what ever the
name of your form was, and then go to the right drop down and select one
of the form level events.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">But what
happens when we try to find the form in the left drop down? It isn't there.
This is because everything in VB.Net is based on classes. We will have
to select the item, "(Base Class Events)". This refers to the
top most declaration in our code window.</font></p>
<p><font color="#0000FF" size="2">Public Class</font><font size="2"> Form1<br>
<font color="#0000FF">Inherits</font> System.Windows.Forms.Form</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is the
grand daddy of all the classes for the form. The </font><font size="3"><strong>System.Windows.Forms.Form</strong></font><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">.
All of our form level events are going to inherit from the definitions
in System.Windows.Forms.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now that
we have established where to find our form level, lets look at the method
we want to call. When all forms are closing they fire the "Closing"
event. Makes sense doesn't it. So on the right drop down select the Closing
event. This will cause VB.Net to create the Sub for us.</font></p>
<p><font color="#0000FF" size="2">Private Sub</font><font size="2"> Form1_Closing(<font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
sender <font color="#0000FF">As</font> Object, <font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs)
<font color="#0000FF">Handles</font> MyBase.Closing<br>
</font><font size="2"><br>
<font color="#0000FF">End Sub</font></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This proceedure
looks like the others for the most part, except that the second parameter
now has;<br>
</font><font size="2"><font color="#0000FF"><strong><font size="3">ByVal</font></strong></font><font size="3"><strong>
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs</strong></font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">CancelEventArgs..,
this parameter allows us to cancel the closing of the form. So if we type
"e" followed by a "." we will get the intellesense
drop down with a "cancel" event that we can select and assign
a boolean value to. <br>
Lets add the code;</font></p>
<p><font color="#0000FF" size="2">Private Sub</font><font size="2"> Form1_Closing(<font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
sender <font color="#0000FF">As</font> Object, <font color="#0000FF">ByVal</font>
e <font color="#0000FF">As</font> System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs)
<font color="#0000FF">Handles</font> MyBase.Closing</font><font size="2"><br>
<br>
e.Cancel =
<font color="#0000FF">True</font> <font color="#009900" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">'Set
the cancel method on the closing event to True</font><br>
<font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.lblPrompt.Text
= "I'm fading away!!!!" <font color="#009900" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
'Add some fun text</font><br>
<font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Timer1.Enabled
= <font color="#0000FF">True</font> <font color="#009900" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
'Enable the timer</font><br>
<br>
<font color="#0000FF">End Sub</font></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The first
line </font><font size="3"><strong>e.Cancel = <font color="#0000FF">True</font></strong></font><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
will cancel the closing of the form.<br>
The second line </font><font size="3"><strong><font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.lblPrompt.Text
= "I'm fading away!!!!"</strong></font><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
will change the text in our label.<br>
The third line </font><font size="3"><strong><font color="#0000FF">Me</font>.Timer1.Enabled
= <font color="#0000FF">True</font></strong></font><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
will start the timer.</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now when
we run the program and press the button the form fades away over a second
and the program exits.</font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wasn't
that easy? We actually only had to write seven short lines of code in
order to achieve this effect. Explore the possibilities.</font></p>
<p><font color="#000000" size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Happy
coding.... </font></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<?php
$countfile = "data/counter.txt";
$logfile = "data/WebLog.txt";
if (!file_exists("$countfile")) {
$fp = fopen("$countfile", "a");
fputs($fp, "0");
fclose($fp);
}
$count = join('', file($countfile));
trim($count);
$count++;
echo $count;
$fp = fopen($countfile, "w");
fputs($fp, $count);
fclose($fp);
$fp = fopen($logfile, "a");
$date = date("d M, Y");
$time = date("g:i a");
fputs($fp, "IP: ".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']." Date: ".$date." Time: ".$time);
fputs($fp, "\n");
fclose($fp);
?>
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