Printernames longer than 32 Chars are exported wrong

[Tanarri]

Hi,

in my System I have installed a printer, which is shared from a windowsserver 2016. The printername in my windows 10 is "Godex_VersandB_gross" on "W2K16SERVER"

On exporting a report of my access 2013 project the printername exported as "\\W2K16SERVER\Godex_VersandB_gro192.168.0.236" in the .json

Full JSON

{
  "Info": {
    "Class": "clsDbReport",
    "Description": "rpt_etikett_neutral_100x150 Print Settings"
  },
  "Items": {
    "Device": {
      "DriverName": "winspool",
      "DeviceName": "\\\\W2K16SERVER\\Godex_VersandB_gro192.168.0.236",
      "Port": "192.168.0.236",
      "Default": false
    },
    "Printer": {
      "Orientation": "Landscape",
      "PaperSize": 259
    },
    "Margins": {
      "LeftMargin": 0.0396,
      "TopMargin": 0.1667,
      "RightMargin": 0.0396,
      "BotMargin": 0.1667,
      "DataOnly": false,
      "Width": 5.8271,
      "Height": 3.5521,
      "DefaultSize": true,
      "Columns": 1,
      "ColumnSpacing": 0,
      "RowSpacing": 0,
      "ItemLayout": "Horizontal Columns",
      "FastPrint": 1,
      "Datasheet": 0
    }
  }
}

The Printername is truncated after 32 Bytes because the structure "clsDevMode,tDevMode" has only place for 32 Bytes.

Private Type tDevMode
    strDeviceName(1 To 32) As Byte
    intSpecVersion As Integer
    intDriverVersion As Integer
    intSize As Integer

The limit of 31 Characters (plus terminating NULL) is a problem accoring to:
https://forum.powerbasic.com/forum/user-to-user-discussions/powerbasic-for-windows/14703-printer-names-longer-than-31-characters

To get a list with the complete printernames here is a example:
https://forum.powerbasic.com/forum/user-to-user-discussions/source-code/25008-demo-initialize-printdlg-for-named-printer?t=24359

But: How to do the match beetween the trucated printername and the complete printername?
Any suggestions?

PS: The "Build from source" of the project with the truncated incorrect printername could not be done without user interaction. Access is asking for the correct printer, because "\\W2K16SERVER\Godex_VersandB_gro192.168.0.236" isn't found on my system.

Greetings
Tanarri

[joyfullservice]

Thanks for reporting this! I did some testing with a very long printer name, and I think I found the problem. The great news is that it looks like it is very easy to resolve. 😄 For some reason I was truncating the device name in the DevNames structure to 32 characters...

This should not be needed because we are not dealing with a 32 character fixed length field like we have on the DevMode structure. Instead, we are using null terminators and offsets to return the printer name, driver, and port from a combined string buffer of 255 characters in length.

This should support any reasonable sized printer name well beyond the 32 character DevMode limit. After removing the truncation, I was able to successfully build my test database with no errors. After building, the report is using the long printer name specified in the source file.

I will make this change shortly on the master and dev branches...

[joyfullservice]

Just to clarify this a little further, we are dealing with two different WinAPI structures in clsDevMode. The DevMode structure handles most of the printer settings, but truncates the printer name to 32 characters. The DevNames structure does not suffer from the 32 character limit, and includes the entire printer device name. The export process reads the printer name from the non-truncated DevNames data, and that is what is written to the printer settings json file.

The reason we were seeing a problem on build is that I was (inadvertently) truncating the printer name when loading it back into the DevNames structure. This in turn is loaded into the report export file just before it is imported into the database. Since the name was partially missing, it could not automatically map to the desired printer when the report was opened. Since the printer name was broken, this would then affect subsequent exports.

[joyfullservice]

@Tanarri - You can either hot-fix your version, or build the master branch from source. Let me know if this resolves the problem with your project. (Note that you will need to fix the printer name in the report, save it, then export source to ensure that the printer settings .json file has the full printer name before building from source.)

[Tanarri]

@joyfullservice
I have build the master branch and the problem is resolved
Thanks for your fast help!