win32print - adding some APIs?

[Alan Miller]

[forgive me, I'm a wordy SOB]
I've run into a semi-interesting situation where I need to tweak code 
that's completely ready to go to the printer - PCL in this case, but the 
basic problem could apply to just about anything.  The problem is that 
once I modify the data stream, I don't have a good generic way to get it 
to the printer - I can open up the printer share for writing (for shared 
printers, which covers most of what I'm addressing currently) and send it 
there, but it would be nice to have the ability to send data to a non-
shared printer as well.

What I'm wondering is what it would take to extend win32print?  As it 
currently stands it looks like it's pretty basic - OpenPrinter with a 
printer name to get a handle, GetPrinter to get some information about 
the printer, ClosePrinter to close the handle out again.  No way to deal 
with actual print jobs that I can see unless the handle is usable as a 
device context handle for printing with win32ui.

The things I see missing are StartDocPrinter and EndDocPrinter, along 
with WritePrinter to actually get data to it.  Is sending data directly 
to the printer or queue without going through the Windows drivers 
something that people have considered or would find useful?

If nobody else is interested I can maybe take a hack at the source, but 
my current C++ experience is pretty much limited to modifying existing 
code (appropriate here) and I'm not quite sure what the procedure would 
be for getting changes incorporated....

I do have a VB class that I put together to do this, but it seems silly 
to create an ActiveX server in VB so that I can use it from Python to get 
to the Windows APIs.  Inelegant, you might say.  On the other hand, I'd 
love to convert that into Python code if I can get to the APIs.

Any thoughts?

ajm