Printing to File question

rbuser

Hi;

Three questions:

a) I have a report that prints quote for the user. This report has logo
and lines on it to make it look professional. How can I print to a file
a duplicate image of the same report that shows up on the printer?

b) Is it possible to print to file *WHILE* it's printing to the printer?
Rather than invoking the printing process twice?

c) I would like to store an image of that quote inside of a BLOB field.
Where can I get info how to write to BLOB and more importantly, how to
read it back and print it to screen or printer?

Thank you in advance!
--
Best Regards;
Ben Hayat
Micro Intelligence Corp.
MicNet@Ix.Netcom.Com

digitalmetaphors

a. Render the report to PDF. Check out the waler (www.waler.com) and
pragnaan (www.pragnaan.com) devices for PDF ouput.

b. No. They are completely different processes. You can set CachePages to
true the first time you generate the report which will speed up the second
generation.

c. Render the report to an archive and store the archive in the DB (your
other alternatives are rendering to one of the formats supported by the
above mentioned devices, i.e. PDF, images, etc.). For information on reading
a BLOB from a database look up TBlobField and TBlobStream in Delphi help. RB
6.5 will ship with a DBReader component which will allow you to do this
directly.

--
Cheers,

Alexander Kramnik
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

thank you Alexander;

--
Best Regards;
Ben Hayat
Micro Intelligence Corp.
MicNet@Ix.Netcom.Com

rbuser

For question b)

Yes, you can print to a file while printing to a printer. Take a look at
demo 122 which shows how to print to two printers simultaneously. Instead
of creating a second printer device, create your TppTextFileDevice or
TppReportTextFileDevice (or any other device) and assign it to the reports
publisher. Note that you MUST use PrintToDevices and remember to free these
devices at the end. This method will server each page to each device as
they are created all within a single pass. We use this heavily in our
software.

Let me know if you have any other questions on how to do this.

Chuck Van Acker
Alogent Corp.

digitalmetaphors

You're correct Chuck. Not sure what I was thinking when I answered that one.
--
Cheers,

Alexander Kramnik
Digital Metaphors