Printing

[meoman]

Looking to add JetCet Print Driver to smartphone but not sure what success people have had in adding a printer connected to redfly?. Any particular printer type been successful out there?

 

[mknollman]

As much as I love the idea of JETCET, it has a VERY limited number of supported printers (unless they have added some lately).

As far as use with the Redfly - I have not had any issues with the program opening. If you are referring to physically connecting the Printer via USB to the Redfly, I would guess that is a no go as the Redfly only recognizes mass storage and input devices (mouse, keyboard).

With or without the Redfly - I cannot get it to print to any printer I own. I will add that I may just be doing it wrong, but I have messed with it quite a bit to the point where I don't want to bother anymore. There is supposed to be a generic driver that will print simple documents to "most" printers. If you get this working let PM me if you don't mind.

 

[meoman]

so redfly doesnt support the direct connection of a printer?.. would be big plus if it did as were using the bluetooth for other aspects

 

[mknollman]

If you have wifi and the printer is networked (either on its own or shared from another PC) then JETCET will work, but still only on their very short list of supported printers.

 

[BengtBeier]

I believe this has been discussed a few times and up now no solution has been found. The problem is that Windows mobile is missing USB printer support and the existing solutions are all incomplete. Did write a lengthier entry once, am trying to find it...

 

[BengtBeier]

Ah, here you go:

Well, I've read a bit more about the prining stuff now... From my understanding of how the printing process works there are four obstacles to overcome for that to work. First of all, you need to understand that you are dealing with three different devices (phone, Redfly and printer) each of which would have a specific role in the printing process:
- The printer will print out whatever you throw at it, given you use the right commands to tell the printer what to do. From itself, the printer can print neither a word document, nor a picture nor anything else.
- The Redfly really doesn't do anything else but route those commands from the phone to the printer. Technically, the USB you find in the Redfly is not really the Redfly's USB but a USB of the phone.
- The phone really needs to do all the work. That would mean "translating" the file you want to print into the right commands for the printer and then sending those to the printer.

Secondly, there is a huge number of possible combinations of those three because there are lots of different phones and printers out there. There is no uniform standard for computer-printer comunication but more or less every printer manufacturer has it's own command language. This is exactly why you always need to install a printer driver on your computer so you can print. The problem here is that hardly any printer manufacturers produce drivers for Windows Mobile. Have a look for more info on those languages here: http://www.undocprint.org/formats/page_description_languages.
From my understanding, the two most important languages are PCL and Postscript, though. Your best bet would therefore be to program drivers for those languages yourself (and that's exactly what JetCet Print does for example). However you turn it, though, you will never be able to support every printer.

Third, unlike desktop computer operating systems, Windows Mobile doesn't have a spooler nor a device driver for printing via usb so even if you were able to compile a printer driver for Windows Mobile, the driver could not write printing commands to the usb. JetCet Print supposedly also takes over this part of the job.

Fourth, especially concerning the existing Windows Mobile printing solutions: they currently only support sending print commands via bluetooth or infrared, not via usb. So even if your phone has a usb and you have a working printing software, you will not necessarily be able to plug your printer into the usb and print.

So, to wrap things up, whether you can print with a phone-Redfly-printer combination does not depend on the Redfly but mainly on your phone and the software you use. The chance you will find any such combination that works is marginal. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean it can not work. In fact, as I already said, JetCet printing - and I believe a few other printing programs - already go a long way to solve most of the problems there are. The way to go forward would be to talk to those developers and ask them to add usb support to their programs. If they did that, I believe you would be able to print at least on a large number of printers.

I'm using ActivePrint which has been pointed out further above. For me, this works very well because I normally only use it to queue documents I've written while on the go so they are printed automatically once I get home.