fPRINTER

Quick Data

General Description

The fPRINTER object is an object that enables printing via a printer (as would seem strangely obvious). Printing involves selecting a printer and then drawing to it. Actually putting data out to a printer is just like drawing on any other graphics thing in Windows - and you can use the methods in _GRAPHICSBASE to draw to a printer.

Printing under Windows is one thing that is a thorough pain in the neck. Once you have it working, it's ok, but programming it to get it to work is a pain in the neck. This class is far from perfect, but it will do your average print job, and save you from some very nasty programming. I tested this class via a networked laser printer (my fathers Brother HL-1070 in the study, via some good old Coax network cable (must replace that sometime...)).

This component is derived from _GRAPHICSBASE, and inherits the properties from that.

Methods

The fPRINTER class has many, many methods, and directly documenting them would be detrimental to the purpose of this document - reference. So, for that reason, the methods are split up into seperate categories.

Getting the Names and information about the available printers

These following methods deal with obtaining information about the printers attached or available for use on this computer, and other information about the printers which may (or may not) be useful.

Methods to start a print job

The following set of methods deal with setting up a print job and getting it to the printer, and also with things like managing whether the job is paused or restarted.

Fiddling with the job

The next set of functions deal with fiddling with the job. This means canceling the job, pausing the job, resuming the job, getting information about the job, or other semi-useful things.

Getting and Setting the printer settings

This category of functions deal with getting the settings for the printer, and maybe even setting them. DPI, Page orientation, and others can be set here.

Please note that not all of these functions are 100% reliable. You can use a function until you are blue in the face, and maybe the effect intended by that function will not occur. If you do find a function that does not work, then please contact me, and bother me about it. I will then attempt to get it to work.

Sample Code

Before I get any further, the question that is probably lingering is, "How do I actually put something on paper?" Well, this class inherits the _GRAPHICSBASE class, and thus all of the drawing things that you can do with the _GRAPHICSBASE class, you can do with the printer. The only thing that you should not do is call the StartDrawing() and StopDrawing() functions - you will only stuff things up.

Anyway, onto the sample code...

//Create a printer object...
fPRINTER Printer;

//If you start a print job with the dialog, then you must
//call this function first:
Printer.PreparePrinterDialog();
//You can fiddle with the printer dialog settings by
//getting a pointer to the printer dialog
//(If you want to know how to fiddle with the printer dialog,
//check out the documentation for the fPRINTERDIALOG class)
(Printer.GetPrinterDialogBox())->CallThisMemberOffPRINTERDIALOG();

//Now start a print job, showing a dialog...
Printer.StartPrintJobDialog(Window.GetHandle(), "F3C - Test Document Name");
//Or just start a print job, no dialog...
Printer.StartPrintJob("F3C - Test Document Name, "Brother HL-1070", NULL);
//In the above function, you MUST supply the name of a printer
//that is available on the system. You can get the names of the printers
//with the GetPrinter...() functions. Hey, if you just want to print
//directly to the default printer, then try this:
Printer.StartPrintJob("Document Name", Printer.GetDefaultPrinterName(), NULL);

//A new page is already started for you. You can start writing to the
//first page immediately.

//For example, let's draw a border right around the edge of the page.
Printer.Line(0,0, Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(), 0);
Printer.Line(0,0, 0, Printer.GetPrinterPixelHeight());
Printer.Line(Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(),
             Printer.GetPrinterPixelHeight(),
             Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(), 0);
Printer.Line(Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(),
             Printer.GetPrinterPixelHeight(),
             0, Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth());

//When you are finished with a page, start a new one...
Printer.EndCurrentPage();
Printer.StartNewPage();

//And draw the same again...
Printer.Line(0,0, Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(), 0);
Printer.Line(0,0, 0, Printer.GetPrinterPixelHeight());
Printer.Line(Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(),
             Printer.GetPrinterPixelHeight(),
             Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(), 0);
Printer.Line(Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth(),
             Printer.GetPrinterPixelHeight(),
             0, Printer.GetPrinterPixelWidth());

//Now we are finished. You don't have to stop the page; that's
//done automatically when you call this function...
Printer.EndPrintJob();

//And that's it! You've printed to a printer!
//As soon as you call the EndPrintJob() function, the document
//will be uploaded to the printer and should start printing.

//If you used a dialog when starting the print job, you should call
//the following function when you are all done:
Printer.CleaupDialog();