RedMon Redirection Port Monitor

RedMon - Redirection Port Monitor

RedMon - Redirection Port Monitor

Transparent PostScript printing from Windows 95/98 and NT (3.51, 4, 2000 and XP)
and soon Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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Overview

The RedMon port monitor redirects a special printer port
to a program.
RedMon is commonly used with Ghostscript and a non-PostScript
printer to emulate a PostScript printer.

RedMon can be used with any program that accepts data on
standard input.

Using RedMon you create a redirected printer port.
If you connect a Windows printer driver to the redirected printer port,
all data sent to the redirected port will be forwarded by RedMon
to the standard input of a program.
The output of this program can be sent to different printer port,
or the program can generate whatever output it desires.

A PostScript Windows printer redirected to a RedMon port can shared
on a network.
When this printer is configured to use Ghostscript and a non-PostScript
printer, it appears as a PostScript printer to other network clients.

RedMon can also be used with an lpr client to provide transparent
access to printers on Unix hosts. This is useful under Windows 95/98.
Windows NT already has an lpr port monitor so there is no point in
using RedMon for this. Another alternative is to use RedMon with
PrintGLN, an HPGL
pen plotter emulator.

The RedMon online help is available
in English,
French,
German,
and Swedish.

If you use the Ghostscript mswinpr2 device with RedMon under
Windows NT, please read these notes.

Availability

RedMon works under Windows 95/98, Windows NT 4.0, 2000 and XP.

RedMon version 1.7 can be downloaded from

http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/ghostgum/redmon17.zip.
Translations (possibly incomplete) for
German,
French,
and
Swedish
are also available.
Source code is included.
The RedMon licence requires that you include the source if
you redistribute RedMon.

All user text is stored in language specific resources.
Translating RedMon to another language should be straightforward.
Contact the author if you want to translate RedMon into
your language.

Known issues

• User interface is unfriendly.
• On Windows Terminal Server or Windows XP with fast user switching,
  the "Prompt for filename" dialog will appear on the console or first
  session, not the current session. If you know how to set the session
  for displaying windows, please send me email.
• Writing files to network shares may not work. Using "Run as user"
  may fix this.
• Environment variables are not replaced in the program arguments.
  One workaround may be to use the command interpreter as the
  redirection program, "/c file.bat" as the arguments,
  then use %REDMON_USER% etc. within the batch file.
• Windows 2000 and XP have a job name as the document title,
  not the original document name. This is not something that can be
  fixed in RedMon.
• gsprint can't find any printers because RedMon runs as the default
  user which doesn't have any printers. Copy the printer configuration
  in the registry from the current user to the default user.
  This problem is related to
  using mswinpr2 on Windows NT.

Proposed changes in next version

• A beta release is expected by the end of 2011.
• x64 build (Windows XP Professional x64 Edition) [working].
• Display "Prompt for filename" dialog in the correct session [mostly working].
• Expand environment variables in program arguments [not implemented yet].
• Configure RedMon port from another program [working].
• Extra installer that installs RedMon and configures a port
  as a Ghostscript PDF writer [not implemented yet].
• Remove all the images of dialog boxes from the help file,
  because these are from old versions of Windows [not yet].
• Convert help file to newer Html Help [working].
• Please contact the author if you have other suggestions.

Non-Windows equivalents

RedMon is only available for Windows.