[ale] remote printing, firewalls, etc.

[James P. Kinney III]

I have a web application (sql-ledger) that needs to print to a _local_
printer. Local is defined as the printer on the parallel port on the
machine using the app from a browser.

Sql-ledger uses a standard 'lpr -Pfoo' where printer foo is already
known to the server. I can get the IP address of the accessing localhost
machine from the http environment. I can script the print job to print
to a file or a remote printer until the printer is behind a NAT
firewall.

I'm looking for suggestions on a "pull from remote file" mechanism as
opposed to a "push to print" that can be triggered by a javascript
function. I have several ways of printing a current screen (or separate
frame) with a javascript, but I would like to find a way to have the
single "print" button have the following effect:

1.user presses the print button on the app page
2.app server sends back the page to print to the browser window
3.javascript "catches" the returned page and uses the local print
function of the browser to print.

Basically, I'm trying to eliminate a few user steps (1. print to screen
_then_ print to paper)


-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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