Printing with java app

Question

Hi all, I'm making a program for printing on continuous paper.
I have 2 steps to my program so far and issues in all of them:
1) Creating the print job, setting the paper size, margins, sending to printer
2) I'm printing to a file, so I can remove the last 4 byets of the file that make the printer scroll the page out.
The issues in the first part is that I can't seem to start printing at the top of the page (it always scrolls down like 2 inches). Changing the imageable area and margins don't seem to help with that or I just don't understand them. If I set margins to 0, it's just clipping the text and not printing it out properly. I also can't print more than 1 page size (height-wise), which sucks, considering I'm printing on continious paper.
    @Override
    public int print(Graphics g, PageFormat pf, int page) throws PrinterException {
        if (page > 0) {
            return NO_SUCH_PAGE;
        Paper paper = new Paper();
        paper.setSize(612, 10000);
        double margin = 72;
        paper.setImageableArea(margin, margin, paper.getWidth() - margin * 2, paper.getHeight()
        - margin * 2);
        pf.setPaper(paper);
        Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D)g;
        g2d.translate(pf.getImageableX(), pf.getImageableY());
        Font big = new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12);
        Font small = new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 8);
        int Xlocation = 20;
        int y = 20;
        int count = 20;
        int i = 1;
        while (i < count){
            g2d.setFont(small);
            g.drawString("1", Xlocation , y);
            y += 8;
            g.drawString("2", Xlocation , y);
            y+=12;
            g2d.setFont(big);
            g.drawString("3", Xlocation , y);
            y += 8;
            g2d.setFont(small);
            g.drawString("4", Xlocation , y);
            y += 20;
            i++;
        // tell the caller that this page is part of the printed document
        return PAGE_EXISTS;
    }In the second part I'm removing the last 4 bytes of the file and adding a new line so it wouldn't scroll the page out after it is done printing. This works fine.
I would like it to not prompt the user for file name, but give it a default name of something like "print.prn" and then run command prompt and enter command "copy /b print1.prn lpt1" which would send it to printer and then close command prompt. Is this possible?
the second part:
        try {
            File target = new File(filename);
            RandomAccessFile file = new RandomAccessFile(target,"rw");
            file.setLength(target.length()-4); // Strip off the last 4bytes
            file.seek(target.length()); // set pointer to the end of file
            file.writeUTF("\n"); // add new line at the end of file
            file.close();
            Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
            rt.exec("cmd.exe /c start copy /b " +filename+ " lpt1");
        } catch (FileNotFoundException ex) {
            Logger.getLogger(Printing.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        }  

Answer 1

Anyone have any additional updates on this problem? We've just upgraded to JRE 1.6 update 10 and started seeing this on Windows XP machine. The printer that the users are trying to print to is a Lexmark T644 with a PS driver. I checked the Lexmark site and compared the driver on the users' machines with what is available on the Lexmark site. It appears that the users' machines has the latest version of the driver. I saw there was a bug open with Sun on the same type of problem on a non windows platform and related to having either an * or - in the printer name. I've verified that neither character is in the printer name in this instance. It also sounded as if on this bug that the problem could be reproduced every time. We're not seeing that either. Sometimes the printer accepts the work and other times is doesn't. Any insight on this.