Use PowerShell to Print Output Without Installing Print Drivers

re: Use PowerShell to Print Output Without Installing Print Drivers

K_Schulte — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:25:32 GMT

Hi Ed,

well ..... I've got to aggree to Lionel as far as my empirical mind tells me, I've NEVER used the XPS printer! I even did forget that I've got that driver installed, but I have :-()

On the other side: I never used the Out-printer cmdlet either, so this was a good reminder!

If I would use your approach I would get tired of typing “Microsoft XPS Document Writer” all of the time, too! But I'd like to go a step further and store the printername directly in $ptr

$ptr = (gwmi win32_printer | ? { $_.name -match 'xps'}).Name

or even set it as may standard printer as long as I don't have "something real" attached to my laptop:

(gwmi win32_printer | ? { $_.name -match 'xps'}).SetDefaultprinter()

That's really lazy :-)

Klaus

re: Use PowerShell to Print Output Without Installing Print Drivers

The Point? — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:27:39 GMT

It's obviously not as cool as WMI - Duh!!

re: Use PowerShell to Print Output Without Installing Print Drivers

Lionel — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:53:50 GMT

What is the point of generating XPS when saving to a text file would give you the same advantages (it can be emailed to anyone, stored, archived, and printed easily), and some more (the files are smaller after compression, it's portable even to non-Windows OSes, and there is no worry of the format being left behind and forgotten in a few years (1)).

(1) 'cause, seriously, XPS adoption has been really weak outside of Microsoft.