Programming with .NET - General

Re: Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

silverstarter — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:43:19 GMT

any news?

i ve seen a (or some of) quite complicated solution(s) which is(are) simply too much work to read trough and understand. its crap to have too much work to dig trough it..

does anyone know a small easy example how to pull out a a frameworkelement (i.e. content of a scrollviewer) to a rendered picture or directly to printing?

i dont understand why its not possible to convert xaml to a printable format (or picture). (may anyone can explain me that?)

or may other ideas how to solve it?

or a estimation about when printing will be implemented..

its realy bad not being able to include that inside the sl-app

Re: Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

ksleung — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:02:31 GMT

From what I see, printing is about the only thing that is "embarrassingly missing" from Silverlight for it to be used in a serious business app. Of course there are other incomplete features, such as webcam support (not needed by most biz app), Bitmap support (hopefully fully addressed in SL3 RTW), ClearType support (will be supported in SL3 RTW), Mobile (SL4, nobody has a complete solution anyway), but none are as bad and as essential as the printing option.

But think about it this way. Silverlight is VASTLY superior to Flash as a biz platform. Period. I have been active on this forum for several months -- partly to gauge how people are using SL -- and a significant portion of the questions are related to concepts that are business-app specific. I would say a lot of people are working on some killer biz apps, and a lot of them are doing so with full understanding of the lack of printing support.

Printing support is a top priority of the SL team. I'd be surprised if we don't see printing support in SL4 beta. Given SL3 is (rumored to be) coming out in July, SL4 beta may not be that far off...

All in all, I hope you don't give up on SL biz app just because printing support is not here yet.

Another consideration... given that it is possible to workaround the printing issues, it is by no mean a show-stopper. Besides from SharpGIS's attempt, you can also go the Firefox plugin route... It is extremely easy to write a screen-capture FF plugin so in the worse case you can augment your SL biz application with a FF plugin for printing as an interim solution. For example, see Pixlr's FF plugin.

Re: Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

silverstarter — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:57:16 GMT

thanks for the replies guys and thx for the estimation

thats realy sad.. i love silverlight, especialy the easy way to build powerful RIAs

but missing printing at all (besides stupid snapshot of what you see now and print via browser..) realy prevents it from becoming a no1 choice for business app development..

and i dislike flash.. *sigh*

Re: Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

ksleung — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:58:42 GMT

Currently all known solution requires the SL app to send the XAML and what-not to the server (most likely a sister WPF program) for processing.

SharpGIS was working on a solution that does the following -- create a WriteableBitmap, render the app to the WriteableBitmap using Render(), using client-side Png encoder to encode the WriteableBitmap to a Png stream, move the Png stream to the the HTML domain using Data-URL, and print the HTML page. The problem with this approach is (1) WriteableBitmap is not readable as of SL3 beta, but will hopefully change in SL3 RTW, (2) even if it is readable it is still under security policy meaning if your app has ANYTHING cross-domain the WriteableBitmap will not be readable, and (3) Data-URL is amazingly fragile and not truly cross-platform. But still, it may be better than not having anything. I can see it may be the way to go between SL3 RTW and SL4.

Re: Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

silverstarter — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:45:26 GMT

so, as long as theres no native printsupport i gotta build/use a silverlight-independent program which builds a graphic which at least alikes the graphic in silverlight? well that would be like doing the stuff a 2nd time ..

theres no "convert xaml to [any form of picture/pdf/whatever]" - function or even direct print of xaml? function (even out of silverlight? may send the xaml to a server..)

Re: Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

jay nanavati — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:32:58 GMT

yes ksleung, after reading your post, I searched about this and you are right. I was thinking that writeablebitmap can be read but it is not possible.

Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

ksleung — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:20:42 GMT

Unless I (and many others) am mistaken, you cannot use WriteableBitmap for this purpose, at least not in a cross-platform way. Yes you can create a "screenshot" of anything in SL using WriteableBitmap. But (1) SL image is not the same as HTML image and as far as I know SL content cannot be printed. (2) You also cannot hack it by converting WriteableBitmap to Jpg using either client-side or server-side encoder because the WriteableBitmap is not readable, only displayable.

The (2) route may be partially solved once SL3 RTW comes out. For the (1) route, you'll have to wait for SL team's native printing support.

Re: Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

jay nanavati — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:19:00 GMT

I think you should read from these two links:

http://www.silverlightplayground.org/post/2009/03/18/Silverlight3-WriteableBitmap.aspx

http://interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/2008/11/07/silverlight-writeable-bitmap

Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

silverstarter — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:05:36 GMT

so i could simply send the content of a scrollviewer to the writeablebitmap class and it would build me a equal looking picture ?

or much more complex, since you said i would have to build a good logic for it.

Re: estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

jay nanavati — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:44:56 GMT

WriteableBitmap Class in Silverlight 3 can do screen print and thus generated bitmap can be opened in new html window for printing. this but you need to develop good logic for this.

estimation or workaround for graphical printing implementation

silverstarter — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:37:07 GMT

hi,

im building a program which offers several ways of showing the data, in a selfmade templated grid, in a graphical gantt-view, etc..

now since its planned to be a business app, printing is a must have..

the problem: all i can find is the (for my app) almost useless IE integrated printing(i have scrollviewers etc, so much of the information would be clipped)

or workarounds which offer text printing but no graphical stuff

can anyone give me a estimation when ms plans to implement printing?

or help me to find a workaround which offers xaml -> print

thanks in advance

silverstarter