HOWTO: Print a Report to PDF Format using a PDF Engine

The information in this article applies to:

• ASNA Visual RPG
• PDF Engine
• Acceler8DB

SUMMARY:

These steps show what is needed to Print a Report using a PDF Engine.

STATUS:

Current.

MORE INFORMATION:

NOTE: In a Web application, PrintSetup and Print Preview should be set to *NO/*False. You cannot specify PrintSetup as *YES/*True in a Web Application, as the dialog will appear in a background process with no way to interact with the dialog. These steps start after you have an existing application which can successfully print out reports to a printer.  You or your client will also need a PDF reader to open the PDF documents you create.  Adobe has a free PDF Acrobat Reader.

TIP: Web based printing occurs on the server, never on the client's printer.

1. You will need to obtain a PDF Engine that meets your needs. This PDF Engine will convert the Printed Report into a File that gets saved on your disk.  These are two locations that you can obtain more information about PDF Print Drivers (there may be other sources to obtain a PDF Print Driver):

Dane Prairie Systems, LLC

Adobe Acrobat

ActivePDF (very useful for Server Based PDF Printing)

BroadGun Software pdfMachine

2. Install the PDF Engine.  Please read any extra documentation that comes with the PDF Engine.
3. Run your application and the user will be presented with the Printer Dialogue box after they selected to Print a Report.  At this point, the user will need to change the printer destination to the PDF Engine.
4. The PDF Print Driver will then prompt for a the user to enter in a location and name of the file they want to create.

TIP:  Here is a link for Dane Prairie Systems, LLC (Win2PDF) on how to bypass the filename dialogue.

Other ASNA KB Article:

• BUG: Can't use Print preview on Windows 9x client to Adobe PDF Writer

Keywords: report, printing, IDE, develop, driver, PDF, Engine, "print to file"