Printing nightmare

Greetings.

I'm trying to make an app that prints data on the printer with VC 6, however, when I do the TextOut function for the whole text, it prints the whole thing on one line, and \r\n 's are turned into two small unidentified-character boxes.. I've searched through the forums and I've found the idea of taking all the lines, one by one, and print them on a separate line each.

That would work, but I get the same problem with \t , they are also printed as little boxes and not as tabs. I can't believe there isn't an easy way to print text into the printer! I mean, isn't there anything like the Printer object in Visual Basic? or something to make printing easier? it could take me days to write a whole printing module while I'm thinking that it is a very common task that there must already be something implemented that does it!

If anybody knows anything, please, let me know

Osk

I've not played around with printing much, Osk, but from what I undertstand printing, like gdi, is via a device context. So fns like TextOut, ExtTextOut, DrawText etc should all work ok. The output may look slightly different ie may not be completely wysiwyg.

If you are looking to output a chunk of formatted text take a look at DrawText or DrawTextEx.

Sorry I can't be more helpful than that.

Unfortunately, as you have noticed, '\r' and '\n' dont work very well in GDI....but '\t' does if you use a specialized API called TabbedTextOut.......it works as TextOut, but allows you to use tabbing.

Unfortunately, you must specify the size that tabs leave between text and calculate them as intervals accross the horizontal dimention of the page/window.....this can be done with an array....I have also noticed there isnt too good info on this function on the web (I found the API docs a little confusing at first, and neither Petzold or Prosise give a real example - that I could find..)...so it took me a while to Understand it.....

I thought I'd use this opportunity to make a prog that paid homage to one of my favorite horror movies & books - The Shining!!! (you have to enjoy yourself now and again) - hope it helps you

Code:

#include <windows.h>
#include <commdlg.h>
#pragma comment(lib,"comdlg32.lib")//for vc++...otherwise add lib

//***********************************************


int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInst,HINSTANCE hInstPrev,
	LPSTR szCommand,int nCmdShow)
{
	PRINTDLG  pd = {0};//For the PrintDlg API
	pd.lStructSize = sizeof(PRINTDLG);
	pd.hwndOwner = HWND_DESKTOP;
	pd.Flags = PD_RETURNDC;
	pd.nCopies = 1;
	DOCINFO di = //This gives info of your job on the printing queue
	{
		sizeof(DOCINFO),
		"Fordy loves the Shining!"//catchy phrase
	};
	const char szBuff[] = //Token text to print - note TAB in middle
		"All work and no play.....\t.....makes Fordy a dull boy!";

	
	if(!PrintDlg(&pd))//Open the Print Dialog...allows you to choose printer
		return 0;//if cancelled...bail

	HGDIOBJ hFont = //get current font of printer
		GetCurrentObject(pd.hDC,OBJ_FONT);
	if(!hFont)//error check
	{
		MessageBox(0,"Unable to get font",0,MB_OK);
		return 1;
	}

	LOGFONT lf;//struct to hold font data
	if(!GetObject(hFont,sizeof(lf),&lf))//get data about font
	{//error check
		MessageBox(0,"Unable to get font data",0,MB_OK);
		return 1;
	}
	LONG lpHeight = GetDeviceCaps(pd.hDC,VERTRES),//get height of page
		 lpWidth = GetDeviceCaps(pd.hDC,HORZRES),//and its width too
		 lfHeight = lf.lfHeight;//get height of font
	
	//Now we want an array for our tab positions
	const int nTabArraySize = 4;//4 tab positions
	int nTabArray[nTabArraySize];//array of positions
	for(int i = 0;i < nTabArraySize;++i)//for each array...
	{
		//space it out in quarters along horizontal of page
		nTabArray[i] = i*(lpWidth/nTabArraySize);
	}


	if(StartDoc(pd.hDC,&di)>0 && StartPage(pd.hDC)>0)//Start doc and page
	{
		for(int i = lfHeight;i <= lpHeight;i+=(lfHeight*3))
		{
			//Now...print out text
			//....and move down 3 times the height of font each time
			TabbedTextOut(pd.hDC,10,i,szBuff,sizeof(szBuff),
				nTabArraySize,nTabArray,10);
		}
		
		EndPage(pd.hDC);//end page
		EndDoc(pd.hDC);//end doc
	}
	DeleteDC(pd.hDC);//cleanup!

	return 0;
}

This is great: TabbedTextOut() fixes the tabs and DrawText() fixes the line breaks... but it's still not working... Well, but with the DrawText function, I can do some good stuff...

However, I still can't believe Visual C++ has no single simple text printing routines!!! Every language does!!

Well, thank God Windows XP still supports

Code:

FILE* printer=fopen("LPT1","wt");
fprintf(printer,"Hello, world");
fclose(printer);

doesn't work with networked printers.. I wonder why

Well, I'll get to wrok on it tonight! how fun!!!

If you guys have any other ideas, lemme know, preferably by PM@FD

Osk

I use an array of strings

Code:

GetTextExtentPoint32( hdcPrinter, sBuffer, lstrlen(sBuffer),  &Size);//find the size of a SPECIFIC line of text
XStart=iLeftMargin+(int)( ( (iRightMargin - iLeftMargin) -Size.cx )/2); //this will center the text
TextOut(hdcPrinter,  XStart, YPos, sBuffer, lstrlen(sBuffer));//print it
YPos+=Size.cy;//increment line count