CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#visual-studio-2010printing
Eplzong
Eplzong

Reputation: 670

Print the winform in high quality?

I am new to writing code, but am learning C# and am making a little bill-making program for my shop. I need to print the form, which is my bill. From searching on the internet, I found this piece of code:

printForm1.Print(this, PrintForm.PrintOption.ClientAreaOnly);

My billing form has two images and one gridviewbox. This code can print the bill, but quality of the .xps file is poor - even the text is not printing sharp.

How can I increase the print quality of the form?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3364

Answers (2)

Marco-Hans Van Der Willik
Marco-Hans Van Der Willik

Reputation: 9

Following is a basic sample of rendering a large image to the printer:

Bitmap bitmapToPrint;
    public void printImage()
    {
        bitmapToPrint = new Bitmap(3400,4400);
        Font font = new Font(FontFamily.GenericSansSerif, 120, FontStyle.Regular);
        string alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
        Graphics graphics = Graphics.FromImage(bitmapToPrint);
        graphics.TextRenderingHint = System.Drawing.Text.TextRenderingHint.AntiAlias;
        graphics.DrawString(alphabet, font, System.Drawing.Brushes.Black, 0, 0);
        graphics.DrawString(alphabet, font, System.Drawing.Brushes.Black, 0, 1000);
        graphics.DrawString(alphabet, font, System.Drawing.Brushes.Black, 0, 2000);
        graphics.DrawString(alphabet, font, System.Drawing.Brushes.Black, 0, 3000);

        PrintDocument pd = new PrintDocument();
        pd.PrinterSettings.PrinterName = "Microsoft XPS Document Writer";
        pd.PrinterSettings.PrintToFile = true;
        pd.PrintPage += new PrintPageEventHandler(pd_PrintPage);
        pd.Print();
    }
    void pd_PrintPage(object sender, PrintPageEventArgs e)
    {
        e.Graphics.DrawImage(bitmapToPrint, new RectangleF(0.0f, 0.0f, 850.0f, 1100.0f));
    }

Upvotes: 0

Hans Passant
Hans Passant

Reputation: 941635

Yes, that doesn't look good unless you have really long arms. The issue is that printers have a much higher pixel resolution than monitors. A decent printer has a 600 dpi (dots per inch) resolution. Monitors by default are 96 dpi although that's finally improving after being stuck on that for decades.

So to print a form the way you do, you have two unpleasant choices. You can print the form so that one pixel on the screen is one pixel on paper. That gives you a really sharp image of the original form but it is about the size of a postage stamp. Or you print the form as big on paper as it is on the screen, what you see happening now. That turns a single pixel on the monitor into a 6 x 6 blob on paper. The result looks very grainy, particularly text looks poorly.

A solution would be to draw the form 6 times larger on the screen and print that. That however doesn't work, you can't make the form bigger than the screen. The only real solution is to draw 6 times larger to the printer. That requires the PrintDocument class. And a bunch of code in its PrintPage event handler to do the drawing. You can't coax the controls to do it for you so that's a bunch of work.

Or use a report generator. They exist to solve this problem. Google ".net report generator" to start shopping.

Upvotes: 4

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