Sending text to printer

[Java Tip]

Example below sends the text to the printer for printing. Its a very simple way of doing things.

import java.io.*;
public class SimplePrinting {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      FileWriter out = new FileWriter("lpt1");
      out.write("Hello world");
      out.write(0x0D); // CR
      out.close();
      }
    catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      }
    }
}

[Deo Favente]

With JAVA, this writes to a file called "lpt1". Yes, this is extremely useful. Here's a simple method that takes a string and produces a physical piece of paper with words on it. Better yet it provides a dialog to which the user can select what printer and many (but usually not all) printer settings.

PrintingTask.print("Hello World");

class PrintingTask extends SwingWorker<Object, Object> {
        private JTextArea text = new JTextArea();

        public PrintingTask(String data) {
            text.setText(data);
            this.execute();
        }

        public static void print(String data) {
            new PrintingTask(data);
        }

        protected Object doInBackground() {
            try {
                text.print(new MessageFormat(""), new MessageFormat(""), true, null, null, true);
            } catch (PrinterException ex) {
                //Opps... cant print. Insert error handling code here.
            }
            return null;
        }
}