Generic printing class (and how to print a list control content)

A Generic Printer class - and how to print a list control content (or how to print from anywhere without too many troubles).

The CPrinterJob class is a base class for implementing print process aside from the view architecture; it comes along with a CPrintStatus (a CDialog derived) which shows the printing progress process. You will need to derive a class from this and override the virtual functions as you need; the function are exactly the same as the CView ones (OnPreparePrinting, OnBeginPrinting, OnPrint and so on ..) and you can threat them in the same way; then you can call the OnFilePrint function that will start the printing process. If you want to call a "Page Setup" dialog for customizing the printing you can do this in the OnPreparePrinting function and eventually return false to break the process.

As an example, I've written a class to print the content of a CListCtrl (CListCtrlPrint) with a CListPrintSetup class to manage header, footer, fonts types and sizes and margins.

The CListPrintSetup uses three things that can be used for other purposes:

1. A CCoolButton class, which is an ownerdraw button with a cool look (main code borrowed from another codeguru .. :)
2. A CFontCombo class, which is a combobox for choosing a font; borrowed from Girish Bharadwaj code with only a small modify to avoid symbols font
3. Some macros (you will find them in the CListPrintSetup header file) to manage tab pages. I use here this way for tab sheet: I write the main dialog which contains the tab control and the button which are common (ex. Ok, Cancel), and then the tab pages as child dialogs without borders and title; then with the macros you can easily connect them to the tab control.

The CPrinterJob class

virtual bool OnPreparePrinting(CPrintInfo* pInfo, bool bPrintPreview = false);

virtual void OnBeginPrinting(CDC* pDC, CPrintInfo* pInfo);
virtual void OnPrint(CDC* pDC, CPrintInfo* pInfo);
virtual void OnEndPrinting(CDC* pDC, CPrintInfo* pInfo);

Supposing you have properly derived your class and do something in the OnPrint()
(ex. CMyPJob::OnPrint(CDC* pDC, CPrintInfo* pInfo) { pDC->TextOut(100,100,"Hello World!"); })
all you need to do the printing process is this:

CMyPJob pJob;
pJob.OnFilePrint();

To include this class in your project you will need to do this:

	CListCtrlPrint cJob;
	cJob.csPageHead = "This is the header of the file\r\nMultiline!\r\n";
	cJob.csPageFooter = "Just a test for the footers\r\neventually multiline too ..";
	cJob.csPage = "Page %d of %d";
	cJob.pList = &wndList
	cJob.OnFilePrint();