Printing forms and labels in Python

[rantingrick]

On Jun 13, 1:13 pm, Monte Milanuk <memila... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/13/10 10:23 AM, Diez B. Roggisch wrote:
>
> > However, the overall problem here is that printer APIs are very
> > different between os and they aren't abstracted in python to some common
> > module. They need access to GUI libraries which python doesn't expose
> > out of the box.
>
> I know the usual response to what I'm about to say is "Knock yourself
> out, let us know when you have something workable" but I have to say it
> anyways... wow, that seems like such a gaping hole that I can't hardly
> believe its not filled.  Printing final results is a *huge* part of what
> I'm wanting to do.
>
> Seems like it'd be a huge opportunity for someone wanting to
> improve/contribute to python, or like one of the 'summer of code'
> projects, etc.

EXACTLY! This is a major missing piece of Python stdlib or at least a
needed 3rd party module. But in order for it to be adopted we need to
make it cross platform. I would also like to include some Image
Acquisition capabilities just to round out the usability of the thing.
I can help on the windows side unfortunately i know nothing of mac and
Linux so if anyone else wants to try to create a stdlib "acceptable"
module (or just a good 3rd party mod) i will offer my limited win32
experiences to the pile.

As far as printing raw text to a printer Tim Golden has posted some
code here. Although limited it's a good start...

   http://timgolden.me.uk/python/win32_how_do_i/print.html

Also i found an incomplete script many moons ago if you are
interested. It's needs polishing however it's a start. The script
processes raw test and organizes it into pages before sending the data
to printer (win32 only!) I cannot find the link but if anybody wants
the script contact me. I need to wrap it into a class.  It's pretty
ugly, albeit working code.