Remote Printing directly to a client printer

Question

We have remote workers and would like to give them the ability to print directly to their local printers.

Does dbFront have any support for Google Cloud Print or PrintNode?

Answer 1

dbFront can currently print to any server connected (network or direct) printer. This means that dbFront can easily handle departmental printing and even remote printing if the client network and printer is connected to the server.

Remote users can have their printouts returned as a PDF which they can view or print themselves.

At the moment Printing those PDFs from dbFront takes about 3 clicks.

1. Click the Report button within dbFront.
   This will run and display the report.
   A report can be preconfigured to immediately open as PDF or QuickPrint.

2. Type CTRL-P, or click on the Print Icon in the PDF viewer
   This will bring up the Browser's Print Preview.

3. Click the final print button in the browser.

I can remove the second click by having the PDF or QuickPrint output immediately trigger a print request.

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16239513/print-pdf-directly-from-javascript

I can remove the third click but it will require several Browser specific hacks or plugins. If you have a suggestion then please let me know via a comment below.

Possible options include:

• https://github.com/qzind/tray
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9213660/html-javascript-one-click-print-no-dialogs
• https://developers.google.com/cloud-print/docs/appInterfaces

Thank you for this request. If I get more requests or funding then I will definitely pursue Google Cloud Print or PrintNode support. Please vote on this Feature Request if it interests you.