🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1658@bdrc.bdrc.bd.com> jcl@bdrc.bd.com writes:

>How does one print using OWL?  The Borland documentation is very confusing
>to me (perhaps because I'm a windows newbie).  It seems to me that
>all I would need to do is instead of writing to a display context
>I would write to device context instead.  Windows should take
>care of everything else for me.  Thus, if I had a function that produced
>some output, I would send it a device context or a display context
>depending on where I wanted the output to go.  Am I being naive? 
>

That's exactly right.  Just write your drawing code to draw on a DC.
In most cases the code shouldn't care if it's drawing on the screen,
to a printer, a metafile, or whatever.  In the rare cases you DO need
to know, call "GetDeviceCaps" to find out.

>Another question is how to I get a device context?  The CreateDC function
>needs the driver name, the device name, and so on.  Why do I need to
>supply these things?  I just want output to go to the default printer.
>

The simple way in Window 3.1 is to use the printer common dialog box.  Just
call the "PrintDlg" function, and it returns you a DC.  Easy.

>Would some kind soul send me a minimal program to print the phrase
>"Hello, world!" via Windows?
>

I don't have any code to hand, but, in its simplest form all you do is:

    ... Get Printer DC from common dialog function .....

    StartDoc(....);
    StartPage(.....);

    ... draw to printer DC ....

    EndPage( ... );
    EndDoc( ... );

    DeleteDC( hPrinter );

If you have multiple pages to print, just have StartPage()/EndPage() around
each one.

Chris
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| Chris Marriott                           | chris@chrism.demon.co.uk    |
| Warrington, UK                           | BIX: cmarriott              |
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