World: r3wp

p: open printer://
insert p 'start-doc

insert p 'start-page
insert p [text "Page 1" 50x50]
insert p 'end-page

insert p 'start-page
insert p [text "Page 2" 50x50]
insert p 'end-page
...
insert p 'end-doc	;-- this one triggers the real printing
close p

Btw, the printer dialect use milimeters as unit for positioning and 
size.

Possible additionnal features :


- Support for preview View window is possible, but requires some 
fine tuning first in Printer scheme, for WYSIWYG support. 


- Support for Windows standard printer dialog window could be added.


- Support for setting page orientation, page copies, etc...could 
be added.

I don't think that I will have time to add all those features, so 
it's left as an exercice for the community ;-).

Last but not least, the usual one-liner : write printer:// [text 
10x10 "Hello World!"] ;-)

Awesome Doc! I thought I had forever gotten away from start-doc/end-doc, 
but I guess old APIs never die. :-)

Fantastic!

Gregg: I must admit that I missed the good old VB printer object. 
So now, who wants to clone Crystal Reports ? ;-)

I'm unable to test it here, but what about bringing up the printer 
dialog? Does that happen?

Not currently, but it could be added.

Btw, it's possible to list the available printers using : probe printer/enum

It must be said clearly YOU ARE THE GREAT! thx for this all

Thanks but this isn't really such a great piece of code (Windows 
API is doing the real job), even if it fills a gap in REBOL (at least 
for Windows). Btw, in my company, we're using Gab's pdf-maker for 
years now to generate and print all our documents. I made this library 
only because I needed a direct printing solution for a customer and 
I must admit it was a fun work to do.

But this is the merit, everybody could do it (OK almost everybody, 
not me for example), but you did it.  Printing points up dual problem, 
first it is definitely against Cross-platformity, but second if anybody 
intents to work seriously (make real aplications) definitely need 
it.

I've looked at the cross-platform aspects of printing. I think that 
it could be possible to add support for PS and PDF generators for 
Unix and OSX printing support. So we could have the same dialect 
to draw on screen and on printers (on all majors platforms).

I wish I could integrate this with my own printing system, but it's 
highly postscript oriented.

mine focuses more on the UI side, offering various methods of printing 
postscript. there is also a printer queue system as well as a printer 
server.

who wants to clone Crystal Reports ?
  

We would need a /bloat refinement to do that. :-)

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=crystal-reports.r

For information, I've successfully tested direct printing in Linux 
and OS X using PostScript format documents and CUPS as backend. I'm 
currently trying to implement a Draw dialect compiler targeting PS. 
Unix and OS X support wasn't needed for my project, but I couldn't 
resist to give it a try ;-).

I know that Geomol has built a PS lib but, unfortunately, it doesn't 
take Draw dialect as input.

now it's getting really interesting :-)

;-)

le blog de Billaut  : http://billaut.typepad.com/

(oops sorry, wrong window, please ignore my last post)

did you solve the center/right adjustment problem?

R2 kerning issue with Draw that you were talking about ?

yes

It's out of my scope currently, I didn't yet worked on the (cross-platform) 
preview window (where Draw engine will be used).

ok

If Draw has really some issue with kerning, I can't see how we can 
fix that in R2. We'll have to live with an almost-WYSIWYG model. 
If R2 was open-sourced, that would be, of course, different. ;-)

... or ... we can ask Cyphre to fix it? :-)

Sure, if he has access to that part of the source code. Henrik, did 
you made a RAMBO ticket for that issue ?

no, I stopped spending time on it almost immediately after learning 
of this problem.

the idea was to use size-text to produce the needed position, but 
the result is not usable, because I don't think DRAW uses the concept 
of a bounding box for text.

Update on the work-in-progress : http://softinnov.org/tmp/test-page.zip


Both files are printed from the same Draw dialect source, using my 
printer:// scheme. The PDF file is printed through Bullzip PDF Virtual 
printer. The PS file is directly generated by the printer scheme 
(for UNIX/Cups direct printing).


Most of the PostScript support is done (see %test-page.ps), but there's 
still a lot of details to enhance/fix/add: 

o Add center/right alignement support

o Add underline style for fonts

o Fine-tune positionning and bold level.

o Fix minor differences with the GDI version.

To view the PS file, use ghostscript / gsview.

Scaling, auto-fit are also currently missing in the PS version. Landscape 
mode is also missing in both GDI and PS modes.

don't bother with underline style!  It's a relic of type setting.

There are a few good justifications schemes available for postscript

I found a justification routine (doing also alignement). I need to 
study it to see if it fit my needs : align and line-wrap at the same 
time.

word wrap or line wrap?

line wrap

there's also a very nice bar code generator for postscript.

That shouldn't be hard to code in PS. Anyway, now I just need to 
code it in Draw, and let the printer:// scheme do the work.

Btw, I need to make a bar code generator for my current project, 
so that's something I'll work on soon.

(only EAN 13 support)

http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/is the one I use ....

Nice library, thanks for the link.

I wrote a simple one that is available through rebol.org.