Re: Prettty printed reports in MSWindows

[Fionn mac Cuimhaill <invisible@hiding.from.spam>]

On Thu, 01 May 2003 17:32:26 -0500, Mark <no_no@dontspam.net> wrote:

>I'm not used to working in MSWindows, and I'm not used to printing paper.
>
>However, I am currently trying to figure out a good way to print some 
>formatted business reports.  So far it looks like I could write the data 
>in RTF format and get Notepad to do the printing. Or I could write it 
>out in PS and use ghostscript ... maybe use groff to create the 
>postscript?
>
>How do others print out formatted reports with Ada?
>
>Mark

Sigh. I am in exactly same position. I am using David Botton's
GWindows to do Windows programming in Ada. It has printing support
that will handle all the font control that you would want to do, but
it is a very thin binding that is still very close to the underlying
Windows printing API, i.e., using it to produce a usable document is a
very tedious business.

There is a very nice ActiveX dll written in Visual Basic called
qPrinter (do a Google search and you will find it quickly) It is much
easier to use than the raw Windows API if you are using Visual Basic.
In principle, as it is an ActiveX dll, it can be called from GWindows.
I have no plans to use it myself this way, because it does have some
bugs and limitations that make it difficult to use for what I need to
do, but it may work for you. I have no idea how hard it would be to
call this from GWindows;

I am also considering writing output as TeX or LaTex and using a
Windows implementation of TeX, such as MikTeX to handle the details of
printing.

David Gressett
gxrxexsxsxextx1x@xaxixrxmxaxixlx.xnxext
Remove all instances of 'x' to get the e-mail address