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

This class is designed to be a base class for your evil pourpose; it works exactly
as a CView (except for printing preview, sorry!).
It has some virtual functions you can override as you would normally do inside a
CView class:

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

– the only difference from the CView’s one is the bPrintPreview members – I use it
for my pourpose, if you aren’t using it from inside a CView you can safely ignore it.
You should call the base class function from this one (ex. return CPrinterJob::OnPreparePrinting(pInfo, bPrintPreview));

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

– those three functions work exactly as the CView ones and do nothing in the base class
is up to your derived one to do something (almost in the OnPrint – or you will print white pages ..)

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:

This is a class derived from the CPrinterJob. It permits to print the content of a
CListCtrl; it also implements a option dialog for setting the header and footer and
the fonts type and size.

The use of this class is very simple, as you can see in the sample application: in the
OnOK() function of the sample dialog, we find:

	CListCtrlPrint cJob;
	cJob.csPageHead = "This is the header of the filernMultiline!rn";
	cJob.csPageFooter = "Just a test for the footersrneventually multiline too ..";
	cJob.csPage = "Page %d of %d";
	cJob.pList = &wndList;
	cJob.OnFilePrint();

If it meets your needs, all you need is to include the following things in your project:

• the classes for CPrinterJob as stated above;
• classes CCoolButton and CFontCombo for controls
  (CCoolbutton needs the cursor resource IDC_HANDCUR)
• classes CListPrintPage1, CListPrintPage2 and CListPrintSetup for the option dialog
  (you’ll need the dialogs resources and the bitmap resource IDB_PAGE)
• and finally, the CListCtrlPrint which implements the CPrinterJob derived class and
  actually do all the work.

You can peer through the CListCtrlPrint code to see how to implement a CPrinterJob
derived.

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