Topic: PDF printer with Windows drivers pushed from the server

[erroneus]

I have read through and attempted to follow countless HOWTOs on the subject and have had no success.  Things seem to work and then the Windows machine simply won't accept that there are supposed to be printer drivers available for install.

There has got to be a working solution, but working from a stock fresh install of SME 7.3, I have had no luck in getting it to work beyond a certain point... that point is getting drivers that work to install on a WindowsXP machine.  And I have read that Vista won't work at all, so this idea should probably be revisited anyway.

[MSmith]

Any particular reason not to use PDFCreator?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

[erroneus]

For one, it means installing additional services and responsibilities on a Windows machine.  I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the mail reason Windows performs so badly is that too much varied software gets installed on machines.  The least amount of software on the client the better.  Further, it prints to the local machine rather than through a remote machine.  It is better on the server.

But with that said, is it possible to make the driver portion of PDF Creator communicate with the server side of the PDF printer?  If so, then that is most definitely the answer.  I know one avenue I am going to try exploring is using CutePDF in a similar fashion.  Many of my CAD users like to make PDFs in a wide variety of paper sizes.  CutePDF allows that... I haven't tested PDFCreator for that functionality but I will.