virtualPrinter

This library allows you to easily create a windows virtual printer.

How to use

• Simply create a Printer('my printer name',acceptsFormat='png') object, and implement its printThis(doc,title=None,author=None,filename=None) method.
  • It should show up in your list of windows printers.
  • Every print job ultimately calls your printThis() with a new doc in the acceptsFormat format
• see the examples directory for details

Theory of Operation

1. Open a TCP server on a (loopback) adapter
2. Tell Windows to install a PostScript network printer that lives at that address:port
3. Whenever a print job comes in on that network port, call commandline GhostScript (required) to convert the PostScript into a PDF (works great, since the two formats are closely related)
4. Use PIL to read that PDF into an image
5. User code gets passed a normal, everyday, PIL image, plus some meta info (title,user,etc) gleaned from the original PostScript