Autoprint Technical stuff:
We often are asked the same question via email support. Here are some of these questions, and typical answers; we hope that they will be helpful to you.Q. Where do I enter my license information?
A. Main window - Settings button Then last tab of the Settings dialog (License tab) Press the Update license button
Enter your details exactly as you did when purchasing, you need:
- Registered name
- zip code
- serial code that was generated for you
Q. Autoprint doesn't work as I expect when running as a service!
A. Whether you run Autoprint running as a normal application (console) or as a service you are in fact running exactly the same executable. When you run it as a service you will need to make your settings with an instance running as a console application, save the settings and re-start the service. (The service needs to be stopped whilst you do this.)
Now, there is another issue that determines whether Autoprint running as a service can find those settings, and that is the 'user' under which it runs. If you go into:
Control Panel > Admin tools > Services > Autoprint > Log on tab
then select the 'This account' radio button. Enter the same account as you used to run the console version. Make sure the console version is not running and re-start the service.
One caveat also applies to the account that you specified above: it must have read/write access to the polling dirs and be able to read the install directory. It also needs access to all printers that are connected / used. I tend to use the admin account.
Q. How do I print to multiple printers at the same time?
I tried to create multiple settings and it seems like it only prints to the first setting.A. You can do this by using the 'Destination Dir' feature in each file type's settings. Be careful not to create a 'circular' path, where the output eventually goes back to the source!
So, to print one file type to several printers, you will need to create several setting groups, each looking at a directory where the other has placed the file after printing.
For example, with a setup with 3 printers, and wanting to print a tiff file to each:
Create 3 directories
c:\autoprint\printer1
c:\autoprint\printer2
c:\autoprint\printer3
Create a setting group from Autoprint's setting dialog called Printer1
Set the tiff Destination Dir to c:\autoprint\printer2 for this group
Create another setting group from Autoprint's setting dialog called Printer2
Set the tiff Destination Dir to c:\autoprint\printer3 for this group
Create your last setting group from Autoprint's setting dialog called Printer3
Leave the Destination Dir blank so that the file will delete.
Now, all you have to do is direct your files to c:\autoprint\printer1 and they should cascade through the directories, printing as they go.
Q. RTF files - although the text was printed OK not all the underlining and the outlined boxes were printed.
A. Autoprint prints most RTF compliant files, but not there are certain limitations, especially if there is WordArt in them. There are also some limitations in table printing.
Q. I am having problems trying to print an RTF to US Letter. It keeps wanting to print landscape and the printer does not recognize the paper size properly. What setting should I be using?
A. Autoprint ver. 2.x supports improved paper size and bin handling code, and this should fix the problem. And just in case, have you got the latest drivers for your printer?
Q. My company works in the commercial printing industry. Can I use Autoprint to print CMYK rip output for proofing?
A. Absolutely. Many companies use our software for exactly that. See the options in the tiff settings.
Q. When I print a fax it is not *exactly* the same size as the original. What can I do to correct this?
A. There are specific scaling options in Autoprint for faxes. Many of these problems arise because fax software companies have used a 200x200 dpi format for their faxes, but the standard is in fact 204 x 196. A fax sent from a standard fax machine to your fax software may not be to scale because of this. The easiest way to fix this is to fax yourself a piece of paper with 10cm x 10 cm grid drawn on it. Then you can measure and play with Autoprint's settings accordingly. See the tiff section of this manual for more information.
Q.We require an auto printing facility for... It creates a html file roughly every 50 to 70 seconds which requires printing. Does your software support this? What is the reliability of your software as it will be running in a real time environment on critical analysis tools and therefore there is no room for error?
A. Autoprint prints HTML without calling any other application, so it's extremely reliable, but like most software we cannot guarantee 100% reliability.
You should find that it is much more reliable that any solution that calls a third party application to print through winexec and then on to standard applications, which in turn call the windows print sub-system.
For Autoprint, the HTML and all images must be saved into the current polling directory, and image printing for all the image types that are used in the HTML turned off (so that they are not printed 'out of context'). You do this by setting their printer to NULL in Autoprint; do this for all jpeg, gif, png files.
There is a textual log created which lists those files printed, and also an error log. Both of these are written according to the results returned by Windows, but an entry here does not guarantee that the file actually has been physically printed.
What I would do is set the polling interval to be quite short, say 5 seconds. I would also make sure that the HTML files have different names, in case of overlap between Autoprint polling and your application outputting. Autoprint has the option to leave image files in the polling directory so there is not the requirement to update them all the time.
I would set up Autoprint on a machine that does not print anything else, and also that does not have any other printer mapped to it. The reason for this is that Autoprint checks the printer queues for all mapped printers, and 'backs off' printing when the queues are filling too much (this amount can be set). You also don't want any other process interrupting the print process, so I'd use a dedicated machine/printer.
Q. Can this software be utilized on a web server?
A. Yes, you could use Autoprint on a web server, but you would have to make a small script in whatever web programming language you were using to allow the user to select files and then the script would have to copy them to an Autoprint poll directory. Obviously the printout would be on a printer that Autoprint could access, not on the user's local printer.
You should also do some sanity checking in your script to ensure that the user didn't maliciously abuse the printing facility.
There are no licensing issues if you had one copy of Autoprint running on your web server, but you couldn't distribute the Autoprint executable or installation!
Q. My serial number is incorrect!
A. You serial number was generated automatically by Shareit! at the time you purchased the software. The following possibilities for it to fail are: a) You need to have typed it in *exactly* as you did then (and in their confirmation email). b) You didn't supply a zip code, but this is part of the generated code. c) Your registered name was too short. Aside from (a) above, please contact us without delay giving your complete registration details and we will re-generate a serial number for you.