Printing and previewing

[Scott Morrow]

Graham,
    I tackled this task a while back.  Here is an outline of my  
approach:

First, I use a separate "printing stack" for laying out the text,  
adding page numbers, headers etc.  I took the block of text I wanted  
to print (unknown size) and broke it up into page size chunks,  
placing text into a field on the "printing stack" and creating a new  
card in the "printing stack" for each new page-sized chunk of text  
until all the original text had been placed into the "printing  
stack".  Techniques for doing this have been discussed on this list  
more than once.  (I've included a script scrap below which was  
developed from advice offered here.)

Once you have a mechanism for knowing where the page breaks occur,  
this same routine can be used for putting text into a series of  
fields inside a scrolling "preview" group that the user can examine.   
I still use the "printing stack" with format for printing to  
determine each page break and then copy the text off of each card and  
place it into a normally formatted (and visible to the user) stack,  
each card of the "printing stack" going into a separate "page-o-text"  
field. I put a field that displays the page number in between each  
"page-o-text" field.  If this is all in a scrolling group then the  
user can scroll through and see the number of pages and exactly where  
each page break will occur.
HTH

-Scott Morrow

Elementary Software
(Now with 20% less chalk dust !)
web     http://elementarysoftware.com/
email   scott at elementarysoftware.com


----------------  script scrap for breaking a text block into page  
sized chunks --------------------
-- assumes a stack "PrintComments" with a field  "bigComment"  (sized  
appropriately)
-- assumes a source field "bigComment" of a source stack  
<lPrintJobStackName> ... so that the htmlText can be used
-- watch for line wraps --

  -- copy the styled text off the report field into the field of a  
specially formatted substack, "PrintComments"
   set the htmlText of fld "bigComment" of cd 1 to  tMySourceText --  
the htmlText of fld "bigComment" of cd pThisStudent of stack  
lPrintJobStackName
   -- the text needs to be broken into page size chunks
   put 1 into tCardCounter
   put the number of chars of fld "bigComment" of cd tCardCounter  
into tNumOfChars
   put the formattedHeight of char 1 to tNumOfChars of fld  
"bigComment" of cd tCardCounter into tCharHeight
   put (the height of fld "bigComment" of cd tCardCounter) into  
tFieldHeight
   REPEAT until tFieldHeight >= tCharHeight
     put the number of chars of fld "bigComment" of cd tCardCounter  
of stack "PrintComments" into tNumOfChars
     put the formattedHeight of char 1 to tNumOfChars of fld  
"bigComment" of cd tCardCounter of stack "PrintComments" into  
tCharHeight
     -- remove extra characters and put the remaining into a new  
field on a new card
     REPEAT with c = 1 to tNumOfChars
       IF  the formattedHeight of char 1 to c of fld "bigComment" of  
cd tCardCounter of stack "PrintComments" >= tFieldHeight - 24 THEN  
--  24 is wiggle room
         put the htmlText of char c to -1 of fld "bigComment" of cd  
tCardCounter of stack "PrintComments" into tHtmlText
         delete char c to -1 of fld "bigComment" of cd tCardCounter  
of stack "PrintComments"
         clone cd tCardCounter of stack "PrintComments"
         put tCardCounter + 1 into tCardCounter
         set the htmlText of fld "bigComment" of cd tCardCounter of  
stack "PrintComments" to tHtmlText -- put the text that didn't fit,  
into the new field
         put "page" && tCardCounter into fld "footer" of cd  
tCardCounter of stack "PrintComments" -- update the page number
         exit REPEAT
       END IF
     END REPEAT -- remove extra characters and put the remaining into  
a new field
   END REPEAT -- text in the last field fits
   set the formatForPrinting of stack "PrintComments" to true
   close stack "PrintComments"
   set the loc of stack "PrintComments" to -9999,-9999
   set the vis of stack "PrintComments" to false
   go cd 1 of stack "PrintComments"
   print stack "PrintComments"
   -- delete any extra cards in the "PrintComments" stack
   -- and generally clean up
   put the num of cds of stack "PrintComments" into tCardsToDelete
   REPEAT with x = tCardsToDelete down to 2
     delete cd x of stack "PrintComments"
   END REPEAT

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On Mar 3, 2007, at 2:33 AM, Graham Samuel wrote:

> Folks, I'm faced with the problem of providing a printing routine  
> to print one or more pages of text (the number of pages is not  
> known in advance) on a PC, and also being able to offer an on- 
> screen preview facility. Logically, I want the user to press a  
> 'Print' button and get a printout, or a 'Preview' button and get a  
> preview of the page(s) **exactly as they will appear on the  
> physical printout**; this second mode would also allow the user to  
> go on to print. I might relax on the "exactly" if I could ensure  
> that the same amount of text appeared both on the preview and the  
> printout, and the line breaks came in the same places: but it's  
> second best really if the type doesn't look the same in both cases.
>
> With the aid of Dan Shafer's e-book on Printing in Revolution  
> (thanks, Dan), I think I understand the issue revolving around the  
> formatForPrinting property, in that I have to set up my printing  
> stack with this property set to true and somehow create the fields  
> with the text in - one card per page - without editing them (this  
> seems something of a contradiction, but I'm experimenting...):  
> however it appears to me that if I show these cards as previews, I  
> will get an anomalous result, because the fonts the Rev system uses  
> will not be ones intended for screen display, and therefore (we are  
> warned) will look 'wrong'. If I do use the ones intended for screen  
> display, I run into the danger that they won't look like the  
> printout, and might even end up with different numbers of lines per  
> page.
>
> Would anyone who has already tackled this be prepared to share  
> their approach?
>
> TIA
>
> Graham
>
> PS It's a helluva lot easier on a Mac, where Preview is built in to  
> the OS and fonts are WYSIWYG anyway. But my customers have PCs.
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK and France