Printer status.

Dear All,

I would like to retrieve the status of printers under Windows XP so
that it be possible to know *before* printing whether a printer is
operational.

I had a look at the Microsoft article "How To Get the Status of a
Printer and a Print Job" Q160129 but it is not what I require as the
actual status of the printer is refreshed only during the despool of
print jobs (i.e. after printing).

Thus, I figured out that I had to deal with high level printer
languages such as PCL or PJL to find a solution at this issue.

I would like to know:

- How to use PJL to retrieve printer status? Can someone provide me
with sample code? (I did not manage to send/receive PJL data under
Windows XP using VC++)

- What about printers that do not support PJL? To what extend can I
use PCL to find a printer status? Do I have to use low-level
functions? (e.g. retrieving the IEEE 1284 device-id string and get the
status from it?)

What am I missing? Please help! I am stuck for days on this issue...

Thanking you in advance,

Guillaume.