I may be a bit dense because I haven't touched Windows in a while, but:
I have a user who remains very dependent on a customized WordPerfect-for-DOS installation with related templates and utilities. It should be possible to get WordPerfect to at least output Postscript, since it must support LaserWriters or similar...
...but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to attach PDFCreator to a port visible as a device from a cmd session in XP. Using Windows' network redirection feature as I understand it, "RPT1:" does not appear as a device in DOS. Creating an additional 'redirect port' for PDFCreator is fairly undocumented (to the extent that the installer-created one appears as 'type' PDFCreator?) and in any case I cannot seem to create a port visible from DOS.
What's the best way to go about this? I can't believe Windows truly lacks a 'native' way to do it... But if additional software is required, what is the 'official' or 'best-practice' suggestion there? Or failing that, what's known to work?
I might have a similar problem with an old accounting-system from the dos-days. That system can print to a file on disk.
In the old dos-system, I choose a postscript-printer and when printing, change from a lpt-port to a disk-file and name the disk-file with the extension ".ps". Under installation of PDFCreator, I associated it with .ps-files. Now I dobbleclick on the ps-printfile in Explorer, and it is loaded in PDFCreator like a print-job.
Hmm. While troubleshooting another problem for the same user, I discovered the following, which seems to confirm that the "NET USE" approach is what everyone has hit upon (described here with alternate software, but same difference) and it's possible to tell it to persist:
I'll have to give this another shot with a valid piece of PostScript and see if I get anywhere. But I guess I still want to go through the trouble of setting up a 'custom' PDFCreator so she can depart from her full-screen WP session to find a list of the jobs pending creation - or is that an option in the main UI?