Print To File.

Every one of my printers have the option to print to file.
Researching this has left me none the wiser.

http://ask-leo.com/what_is_print_to_file_used_for.html

https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/printing-to-file.html.en

I then used my Canon printer and PDF-XChange Lite (a virtual printer) and checked the Print to file option.
Both files have no file extensions, and I can't open them in XnView which supports PDF, SVG and Postscript.
Any thoughts on this?

 

Make a backup copy of the file, then add the extension manually to either one to see if it then opens.

 

Doesn't work.
I tried .pdf, .svg, .ps & .eps.
And I tried PDF-XChange Viewer, PDFCreator & XnView to open the files.

Also...
With the Canon printer a 22.8 KB text file becomes a 3.74 MB 'File'.
And with PDF-XChange Lite the same text file's size is 73.1 KB.

 

PRN files (regardless if with or without this extension) contain the whole instruction a printer driver sends to the printer. Since those instructions are specific for any printer you can only send this file to the printer it was made for in order to physically print it (e.g. using 3rd party software made for this purpose).

You could install a PostScript printer driver though. Those drivers are usually postfixed by PS in their names. If you use such a driver to print to a file then you'll get a PostScript file which some apps can read directly and which is convertable to PDF.

 

Thanks GermanOne.
I'm curious, does this feature still exist in Windows 8.1 & 1o? I'm using Windows 7.
And what is the purpose of this 'feature'?

I have PDFCreator installed.
Previously it included the option to save to Postscript and Encapsulated Postscript. That's how I bypassed the WWF 'format', which was a waste of donor's money.

 

To be honest I don't know the reason why you can print to a file. As far as I remember you can use the copy command to send the content to a parallel printer port. Something like

Code:

copy /b "C:\whatever.prn" LPT1:

Not quite useful anymore because nowadays you have your printer rather connected via USB (or even in a network).
On Win10 I still can install any printer driver to print to a local file. Right now I tried it with the "Brother PS Class Driver" which is one of many printer drivers that Win10 already has on board. This driver creates PostScript files as the "PS" indicates.

 

I can print to a file.
I just can't do anything with the file.

 

Sorry for my bad wording I know you can print to a file. What I meant is that I also don't know the reason for this feature. I just assumed it's for historical reasons because you can send the file to a printer port.
Only the PostScrip file of a PS printer driver might be still useful for people who write their own software to convert it to PDF. I remember I did that ~10 years ago. MS Office didn't have the possibility to save the documents as PDF at that time. I wrote a VBA script where I automatically installed a PS driver, printed the document as PostScript, and used GhostScript to convert it to PDF. I'm afraid I lost this code though. Meanwhile it's useless...

 

I think that about sums it up.
Years ago when the World Wildlife Fund wasted time and money to create the 'unprintable' wwf format, I changed the file extension to .ps, open it in PDFCreator, and 'printed' it as a PDF - which of course is printable.
Thanks for your input.

 

Thanks plodr.
With the various free virtual printers available, this 'Print to file' is really obsolete.
Someone doing Desktop Publishing will have a PostScript printer driver. With PDFCreator I can select 4000 dpi.