🚀 go-pugleaf

Hans Georg Frey <hfrey@she.de> wrote:

> whats wrong with the methods getPageDimension() and getPageResolution()
> from the class PrintJob under Windows? The methods doesn't return
> correct values. I've read in "JAVA in a Nutshell, Examples" that
> the methods doesn't work. There is a workaround with the methode
> getScreenResolution() from the class Toolkit. The result is very bad
> and different on different clients.
> 
> Does anybody know whats on with the class PrintJob and how I can
> do printing correct?

As I noted in my previous message, there are a _lot_ of problems 
with the PrintJob class.  Here are some of the things that I have 
found out:

In order to make it easy for you to print components that are 
displayed on your monitor, PrintJob modifies the resolution of 
the print Graphics to make it scale the same as the screen.  
Since the "normal" resolution of a monitor is 72dpi, that's what 
you get with your print job.  getPageResolution() always returns 
this hard-coded value.  The result is that it effectively turns 
your 600dpi printer into a 72dpi printer.

The value returned by getPageDimension() is based on the paper 
size and the 72dpi resolution.  So if you print to 8 1/2 x 11 
paper, getPageDimension() will return 612 x 792.  This value does 
not take into account the printable area of the page.  So the 
actual printable area will be less than the reported area.  As 
far as I know, there is no way to get the printable dimension.

What I have done is to create a resource file that defines the 
printable area for specified page dimensions.  It contains 
strings that look something like:

	612x792 = 540x732
	792x612 = 732x540

Then I wrote a class that loads the resource file and translates 
a page dimension to the corresponding printable dimension.  This 
is far from ideal, but it allows me to configure my code to print 
within the printable area of the printer.

Another note:  Be sure to put a try/catch block around the call 
to Toolkit.getPrintJob(), which catches Errors.  I found that it 
sometimes throws an java.lang.InternalError when there are 
problems connecting to the printer.

I hope this helps.

-- 
Regards,

John P. McGrath
<mcgrath@enter.net>
<jpm@nscs.fast.net>