Print from iPod Touch?

[ppc_michael]

You know what would be cool? If you could print from iPod Touch. On my wireless network I have a computer that's sharing its printer, and a printer hooked up to to my Airport Express as well.

If I could print e-mail, webpages, notes, etc, that would be pretty amazing. Any possibility of that?

 

[mrgreen4242]

I've thought about this as well, and I'm not sure how it would work. If, and I'm assuming this is the case, the touch doesn't have a printer subsytem it would need one from scratch, which would be a pretty big project.

My idea would be to create an application that takes a screenshot of what's on the touch (this already exists in some form or another) and then have it send that image to an application running on the computer with the printer connected to it which would then print it, with whatever options you have it set for (eg, scaling, screens per page, color/B&W, etc etc).

That would probably be the simplest way to do it. In a related note, is there an application that will take a screenshot of whatever you have on your touch and dump it to the photo library?

I'd like to hack together a little custom front end for Google Maps and/or Mapquest that takes the driving directions results and displays them on a page nicely formatted for the touch and then "prints" it to a photo album. Preferably it would send a couple pages - one with the text directions, one with the reverse directions, and a couple with the various map views.

The idea of course being that you could easily save driving directions when you are at a wifi hotspot that you could refer to while on the road.

 

[t0mster]

I know there is a screen shot app, but it doesn't dump it into the photos dir, it puts it in the root dir (not /, but /var/private/root). But you could use finder or some other file browser to open it I'm sure. Dumping into the photo album would be more difficult I think, since you'd have to do whatever it is apple does to make the libraries and encode them. I like the idea, maybe make a seperate app that can recall them, so you just need to dump it in some concise format and then when you're on the go just run the app and pick what set of directions you need.

 

[mrgreen4242]

I know there is a screen shot app, but it doesn't dump it into the photos dir, it puts it in the root dir (not /, but /var/private/root). But you could use finder or some other file browser to open it I'm sure. Dumping into the photo album would be more difficult I think, since you'd have to do whatever it is apple does to make the libraries and encode them. I like the idea, maybe make a seperate app that can recall them, so you just need to dump it in some concise format and then when you're on the go just run the app and pick what set of directions you need.

If there was a separate app to view the directions, it would probably make more sense to just store the data in an XML file of some sort, except of course the maps images, which could be stored as just the original graphic the map service sends.

That would, I suppose, have more in common with an offline website viewer than a printing application.

 

[t0mster]

Yea, I was more thinking of an offline viewer. Wasn't sure what format would be best to store the data in, but XML sounds like it would work great.

 

[Bmuser]

ipod screen shot

I know there is a screen shot app, but it doesn't dump it into the photos dir, it puts it in the root dir (not /, but /var/private/root). But you could use finder or some other file browser to open it I'm sure. Dumping into the photo album would be more difficult I think, since you'd have to do whatever it is apple does to make the libraries and encode them. I like the idea, maybe make a seperate app that can recall them, so you just need to dump it in some concise format and then when you're on the go just run the app and pick what set of directions you need.

~~~~~~~~~
You don't need a special app to save a screen shot into your photos directory. Just hold the top power button and the hit the home button at the same time and it will automatically save the shot.

 

[ppc_michael]

Woo! Blast from the past. At the time of this thread (two years ago), screenshots weren't possible without jailbreak.

 

[diane143]

Over 10 years ago I had a Sharp Wizard. I was able to print to my HP laser via infrared. I really wish there was a decent app on the Touch to print.

I tested Printer Magic, it sees my Epson R200 but won't print to it.

It does not see my old Xante. I only turn on my Xerox Phaser or HP 4500 unless I need them so I have not tested them.

Ideally something that would print over the network to either the Epson or Xante would be great

 

[DavieBoy]

I have a new HP printer. Not the one in the commercials with the web but the one right below it on features. I have the HP printer app, used it once just to test it. I guess I can take a screen shot of whatever I want to print then print it from that app.

 

[JayMan8081]

Awesome! Was just reading this thread because I was interested in whether or not the printing was possible and learned how to take screenshots! That's a pretty cool feature that was probably in the manual but I wouldn't have known about otherwise, thanks.