[Gambas-user] Printing

[Steven Lobbezoo]

Hi Fabien,

I've been looking into the printing problem.
Remember, I'm waiting for the possibility to do a page-switch per program 
control.

Actually, this is not to difficult. I 'm just printing my single pages as 
complete print-output, and use my own page numbering.

But, ..... looking into the whole problem of printing - specially the disign 
phase, I must say: that's REALLY COMPLICATED. As long as it's you doing the 
work alone, we should not even hope for a 'quality' solution soon. Of course, 
nothing against your capabilities ;-) , but I think the work is just to much 
for one person to do.

Take a look at  the Jasper reports engine! It really is complicated, works 
fine now, but has a LOT of developers, and took years and years to get to the 
level it has today! Sure, it's written in jave and thus very slow, but for 
printing .... who cares. Also there's a -really good- application : IReport 
designer, which is a profesional tool to develop reports (wysiwyg). Very 
complicated software, free and using java. (all based on the Jasper XML 
engine). The problem with this software is, that without knowing java, you 
cannot use its output! You have to know about beans, ants and other beasts. 
That's a drag.

Now, I was thinking, would it not be a good idea to write a component, that 
lets you use your IReport designed reports, to feed to the Jasper engine, and 
control the output as per your samples (print to an image, show gs, etc.

We would need something like the following classes:

Show (XMlfile, output from Ireport)
Printselection (exists)
Print --> Printer of the xmlfile
Set the parameters of the report
(You can "program" them in IReport)
And, maybe directly, write to pdf file of the output.
show the Ireport designer interface to the user
(that's allso allready available)
etc. etc.

All in all, not to difficult (I think ;-) ), and it would give gambas a great 
report posibility.
I donnot know java, but would be happy to do anything I can to help.

Comments please,

Steven