# Printing in Ruby **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [February 18, 2006, 7:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/printing-in-ruby/70131 "2006-02-18T19:22:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![analoguedragon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@analoguedragon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/analoguedragon)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2006, 7:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/printing-in-ruby/70131/1 "2006-02-18T19:22:58Z")
It seems there is not a lot of information on this subject so I have a few questions: 1. How can you do simple printing from Ruby? If you have a string how can you print it? At the very least I would like to be able to select the size and maybe the font from the printer’s ROM. I know that you could do this in the DOS days by sending a few control codes dirrectly to the parallel port and then the text you wanted to print (this worked for dot matrix printers where you had a manual which detailed all those control codes). How would you do this in Ruby? Also, would it be possible to do the same for modern inkjet or laser printers? Would it also be possible to do this in a platform independent way? (I’m more interested in Linux, but it would be great if the same code also worked on Windows) 2. Would it be possible to do something like the above but for USB printers? How? 3. How would you do more advanced printing? I know of ruby-cups… are there other alternatives? How about Windows? 4. I have a program (it’s actually a Rails application) that generates PDFs using PDF::Writer. How would I be able to print the PDFs dirrectly without having to save them or open them in a browser… I just want to send them directly to the printer after they are generated. Ruby-cups seems to have .printFile which will print an existing file but, as I said, I don’t want to save the file first. Can I just pipe the generated file to some application? Are there more ellegant ways of doing this? How about Windows? I’m sorry for asking so many questions at once. If you could answer even just one of them I would be very grateful. Also, if you have any links about the subject or you know of other discussions on the topic that would help as well. Many thanks in advance. Alex ---
**Author:** ![analoguedragon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@analoguedragon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/analoguedragon)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2006, 7:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/printing-in-ruby/70131/2 "2006-02-18T19:36:08Z")
On Feb 18, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Alexandru T. wrote: > those > 3. How would you do more advanced printing? I know of ruby-cups… are > generated > Many thanks in advance. > > Alex > > – > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). assuming cups or lpd is setup for pdfs you can just shell out to lpr $file\_name. As far as windows goes I’m sure win32api or win32ole can get you where you need to be.