[Windows]Status printerja

Heh. Dobrodošel v 90. letih. To je "won't fix, working as intended".

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/160129

As referred to by the Win32 API, a "printer" is comprised of the printer driver, the print queue, and the input/output path to the physical printer. The operating system treats a physical printer as merely the destination of a print job generated by and passed through a system "Printer," referred to in the rest of this article as a Printer.

Consequently, a system Printer reports no status when the Printer queue is empty. In this state, the Printer is assumed ready to accept print jobs. This is a valid assumption even if the physical printer is in an error state such as off-line. The operating system considers the Printer ready to accept print jobs even if, for some reason, it cannot complete delivery to the physical printer.

To se od NT 3.51 do NT 6.0 ni spremenilo. Predvidevam, da za NT 6.1 (Windows 7) še vedno velja.

Edini način, da se temu izogneš, je da zaupaš gonilniku za tiskalnik, ki se pogovarja nesporedno s tiskalnikom in te obvešča o njegovi dosegljivosti in splošnem "zdravju" (npr. o črnilu v kartušah). Kako se programsko pogovarjati s tem gonilnikom, ne vem. Na neki točki sem zapustil svet Win32 API-jev in že dolgo časa nisem več pogledal nazaj.