Does anyone know of any reason why the Windows pri...
# cfml-general
d
Does anyone know of any reason why the Windows print spooler needs to be available on a ColdFusion server? The assumption is that nobody is working ON that machine, they're on their own laptops and desktops, connecting to apps running on the server, but they're not actually on it. Our sysadmin wants to turn it off, I think for security reasons. I've tested PDF generation, which like I figure doesn't need it. Anybody know of any concerns with this?
m
cfprint?
q
Dependencies on the cfprint function and cfdocument functions.
d
But users aren't working on the server. Documents won't print there, they'll print on the user's computer. Do you think the print spooler ON THE SERVER is needed for that?
m
Yes? Because it connects over the network to a printer and runs batched print jobs for some people.
People don't just print on their own computer Dave. Some businesses use CF to generate print jobs on their large format and other printers, which need to run from the print spool on the server over the network to finish the jobs. Universities especially often will have central printers which are used to print out documentation, forms, and other administrative paperwork. Sometimes those are generated via remote jobs. Remove the Print package and you should be fine I think.
d
Hmmm, we have shared central printers in some places too. I'm not in one of those places, so I'll need to investigate that flow. I assumed (yes I know about that 😉) that it still looked like a local printer to each user, and the CF server was only involved to generate the document, not to do the actual printing. Not so? I'll investigate some too.
m
Yep. It is actually AWESOME. If you need to have a bunch of forms printed for, say, folks showing up for financial aid in the morning that have appointments, the server can print them and have them waiting in the morning for you to have at the ready. I've actually seen a slick workflow where a company automatically printed invoices, which a machine then put into envelopes for mailing out to folks. Its an older code sir, but it checks out. 😉
q
cfprint and cfdocument use the local print spooler to find out paper sizes, etc.,
The way to get around having the spooler installed is to have a single local printer. Have it be a simple line printer (I think modern windows servers have those drivers still), and it will allow CF to enumerate a single printer, so you won't get any errors.
@Mark Takata (Adobe) Back at my last job, we used it for an automation project. ACF print out shipping bill of materials and shipping labels when orders were placed. Warehouse just had to pick them up off the printer and slap them on a box.
We also had a cool automation where incoming boxes were placed on a conveyer belt, UPS label was scanned using a scanner on the belt, and we checked in all the parts that the vendors sent us. It spit out BOMs to split up the boxes for outgoing jobs. or stock labels to place them on the shelf.
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m
Super cool!
g
Thanks for explaining cfprint
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t
We used to use it for printing admission packets for international students, but cfprint had a hard time with PDFs with embedded fonts for some reason. It made all of the immigration documents look like bad forgeries, so now we use a third-party PDF printer with cfexecute.
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