LEADTOOLS printing functions are designed to work with Windows printing functions. Normally, you use Windows to select a device context (DC) and start the print job. LEADTOOLS functions let you scale and position one or more images in the printer DC. You use Windows functions to get the available page dimensions. You also use Windows functions to eject each page and to end the print job.
In most cases, you can scale and position an image on a printer DC with the same flexibility as when you display an image on a computer screen. You can let the printer handle any dithering or halftoning. Remember, if you halftone a bitmap yourself, before sending it to a printer, you should resize the bitmap to the desired height and width, then use the halftone function, then send the image to the printer without scaling it. (You will get bad results if you scale a halftoned image.)
In.NET, C, C++, Visual Basic, and Delphi, you can use the actual Windows printing functions, or their equivalents in the development system. However, printing with Microsoft FoxPro and older versions of Access is more limited, because they do not give you direct access to the printer DC. The LEADTOOLS ActiveX handles this problem by providing methods to start and stop the print job.
With LEADTOOLS, programmers can easily print text using Windows GDI and print multiple images on the same page. Additionally, you can save coding time because you can use the same code to display images to the monitor or printer.
LEADTOOLS also provides a Virtual Printer driver which can capture printer output from any application and then export it to EMF. The EMF data can be converted to several document formats such as PDF and DOC or programmers can create their own custom output by parsing the EMF data.
Want even more options? Try the LEADTOOLS ePrint Printer Driver. LEADTOOLS ePrint offers you greater flexibility in existing applications that support printing and in the use of physical printers. There are way too many features in ePrint to mention here, just download a demo, try it for yourself or read more about LEADTOOLS ePrint.
