Show progress bar when sending pages to the printer (WPF) - wpf

I am creating printouts in WPF using flow documents. These printouts are set in separate window where DocumentViewer is placed.
When user clicks print I would like to show a progress bar that informs about current page that is sending to the printer. How can I do this?

I'm not sure exactly where your print code is, or where you want the progress bar, but I did something similar to this recently. This will be in VB.net.
First of all, create a new progressbar in the same class as the code you use to send the page to the printer. Then, we're going to take advantage of the "top-down" order in a block of code to change the progress bar.
The progress bar's value should be set to "0" be default. Now, in the code for sending the page to the printer, you're going to increase the progressbar's value (such as with the code "MyProgressBar.Value = MyProgressBar.Value + 1"). Put this code in between each line of the code you want to show progress for.
I would change the "+ 1" part of the code, however, to another value, so your progress bar progresses equally after each step. If you have three lines of code, then use "+ 33" (100\3), four lines use "+ 25", etc.
Finally, at the end of the code, set "MyProgressBar.Value = 100"
This only works, however, if you have access to a code longer than one line. For one line of code, I'm not sure how this works, unless you can get to the block of code that line points to.
If you have to use code from another class, you may need to do something like...
Dim MyWindowWhereProgressIs As New MyWindowWhereProgressIs
And then, each time you need to change the value, try...
MyWindowWhereProgressIs.MyProgressBar.Value = MyWindowWhereProgressIs.MyProgressBar.Value + 1
I'm not entirely sure whether or not those last two lines of code will work, as I'm away from Visual Studio right now, but it is worth a shot.

Related

Printing on Silverlight

I am trying to print a report where we have several different components within the xaml.
By what I`ve found, when printing, you have to treat every UIelement as a single one, thus if the desiredSize is bigger than the AvailableSize you have to activate the flag HasMorePages.
But here comes the problem.
My user can write as much text as he/she wants on the grid, therefore, depending on the amount, the row expands and goes off the printable area, as you can see on the picture below.
I thought about giving a whole page to the grid, but it was to big still, which got me into a loop where the DesizedSize was always bigger than the PrintableArea.
My code is not very different from any source you find on internet when searching for Multiple Page printing.
It is based on this http://eswarbandaru.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/print-mulitple-pages-using-silverlight.html , but using Stackpanels instead of Textboxes.
Any idea?
Thank you in advance.
First you need to work out how many pages are needed
Dim pagesNeeded As Integer = Math.Ceiling(gridHeight / pageHeight) 'gets number of pages needed
Then once the first page has been sent to the printer, you need to move that data out of view and bring the new data into view ready to print. I do this by converting the whole dataset into an image/UI element, i can then adjust Y value accordingly to bring the next set of required data on screen.
transformGroup.Children.Add(New TranslateTransform() With {.Y = -(pageIndex * pageHeight)})
Then once the number of needed pages is reached, tell the printer to stop
If pagesLeft <= 0 Then
e.HasMorePages = False
Exit Sub
Else
e.HasMorePages = True
End If
Or if this is too much work, you can simply just scale all the notes to fit onto screen. Again probably by converting to UI element.
Check out this link for converting to a UI element.
http://www.codeproject.com/Tips/248553/Silverlight-converting-to-image-and-printing-an-UI
Hope this helps

LimeJS animation.Sequence does not complete

i have got a probling concerning my animation.Sqeuence.
Only the first Sequence Element is being executed. The 2nd is ignored.
I want the Sprite spell_1 to move to the Hero (hero_x_exact,hero_y_exact), and after that to the destination.
Each element works fine for itself but not in a Sequence.
goog.require('lime.animation.Sequence');
...
var spellmovement = new lime.animation.Sequence(
spell_1.runAction(new lime.animation.MoveTo(hero_x_exact,hero_y_exact).setDuration(1).enableOptimizations()),
spell_1.runAction(new lime.animation.MoveTo(target_coord_x_spell,target_coord_y_spell).setDuration(1).enableOptimizations())
);
What might work better is using a spritesheet with each animation on the spritesheet Then you can build something that loads each animation by name. Obj_Walk001.png, Obj_Walk002.png
Then create a method to read each animation per frame in the scheduling manager.
You can find an example of this code in limejs/lime/demos/test. Then goto run.htm and click on Frame4 this one will show you how limejs is going it.

Programmatically determining max fit in textbox (WP7)

I'm currently writing an eBook reader for Windows Phone Seven, and I'm trying to style it like the Kindle reader. In order to do so, I need to split my books up into pages, and this is going to get a lot more complex when variable font sizes are added.
To do this at the moment, I just add a word at a time into the textblock until it becomes higher than its container. As you can imagine though, with a document of over 120,000 words, this takes an unacceptable period of time.
Is there a way I can find out when the text would exceed the bounds (logically dividing it into pages), without having to actually render it? That way I'd be able to run it in a background thread so the user can keep reading in the meantime.
So far, the only idea that has occurred to me is to find out how the textblock decides its bounds (in the measure call?), but I have no idea how to find that code, because reflector didn't show anything.
Thanks in advance!
From what I can see the Kindle app appears to use a similar algorithm to the one you suggest. Note that:
it generally shows the % position through the book - it doesn't show total number of pages.
if you change the font size, then the first word on the page remains the same (so that's where the % comes from) - so the Kindle app just does one page worth of repagination assuming the first word of the page stays the same.
if you change the font size and then scroll back to the first page, then actually there is a discontinuity - they pull content forwards again in order to fill the first page.
Based on this, I would suggest you do not index the whole book. Instead just concentrate on the current page based on a "position" of some kind (e.g. character count - displayed as a percentage). If you have to do something on a background thread, then just look at the next page (and maybe the prev page) in order that scrolling can be more responsive.
Further to optimise your experience, there are a couple of changes you could make to your current algorithm that you could try:
try a different starting point and search increment for your algorithm - no need to start at one word and to then only add one word at a time.
assuming most of your books are ASCII, try caching the width of the common characters, and then work out the width of textblocks yourself.
Beyond that, I'd also quite like to try using <Run> blocks within your TextBlock - it may be possible to get the relative position of each Run within the TextBlock - although I've not managed to do this yet.
I do something similar to adjust font size for individual textboxes (to ensure they all fit). Basically, I create a TextBlock in code, set all my properties and check the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties. Here is some pseudo code to help with your problem:
public static String PageText(TextBlock txtPage, String BookText)
{
TextBlock t = new TextBlock();
t.FontFamily = txtPage.FontFamily;
t.FontStyle = txtPage.FontStyle;
t.FontWeight = txtPage.FontWeight;
t.FontSize = txtPage.FontSize;
t.Text = BookText;
Size Actual = new Size();
Actual.Width = t.ActualWidth;
Actual.Height = t.ActualHeight;
if(Actual.Height <= txtPage.ActualHeight)
return BookText;
Double hRatio = txtPage.ActualHeight / Actual.Height;
return s.Substring((int)((s.Length - 1) * hRatio));
}
The above is untested code, but hopefully can get you started. Basically it sees if the text can fit in the box, if so you're good to go. If not, it finds out what percentage of the text can fit and returns it. This does not take word breaks into account, and may not be a perfect match, but should get you close.
You could alter this code to return the length rather than the actual substring and use that as your page size. Creating the textblock in code (with no display) actually performs pretty well (I do it in some table views with no noticeable lag). I wouldn't send all 120,000 words to this function, but a reasonable subset of some sort.
Once you have the ideal length you can use a RegEx to split the book into pages. There are examples on this site of RegEx that break on word boundaries after a specific length.
Another option, is to calculate page size ahead of time for each potential fontsize (and hardcode it with a switch statement). This could easily get crazy if you are allowing any font and any size combinations, and would be awful if you allowed mixed fonts/sizes, but would perform very well. Most likely you have a particular range of readable sizes, and just a few fonts. Creating a test app to calculate the text length of a page for each of these combinations wouldn't be that hard and would probably make your life easier - even if it doesn't "feel" right as a programmer :)
I didn't find any reference to this example from Microsoft called: "Principles of Pagination".
It has some interesting sample code running in Windows Phone.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh205757.aspx
You can also look this article about Page Transitions in Windows Phone and this other about the final touches in the E-Book project.
The code is downloadable: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/mag201111UIFrontiers/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=5776
You can query the FormattedText class that is used AFAIK inside textBlock. since this is the class being used to format text in preparation for Rendering, this is the most lower-level class available, and should be fast.

Why does silverlight run into an endless loop when printing document longer than 1 page? .HasMorePages = true

My 1st question here on stackoverflow.
I am trying to print a long grid, which was dynamically generated.
pdoc.PrintPage += (p, args) =>
{
args.PageVisual = myGrid;
args.HasMorePages = false;
};
When I use args.HasMorePages = false;, it prints the first page of the grid as it should (although it takes some time, since it sends a 123MB big bitmap to the poor printer - thanks for silverlight 4's print feature implementation.).
However, when I enable printing more pages withargs.HasMorePages = true;, the printing job runs amok on the memory and sends endless copies of the first printing page of the document - effectively disabling my developer machine. Even if the grid is only 2 pages long.
Why does this happen?
What is a possible workaround here? All I found on the net is that SL handles printing badly, but not a real solution.
The HasMorePages property indicates to silverlight printing that you have a least one more page to print. The PrintPage page event fires for each page to be printed.
Hence when you set HasMorePages to true you will get another PrintPage event, if you always set it true (as your code appears to be doing) you are creating an infinite loop.
At some point the code has to leave HasMorePages set to false.
Ultimately its up to you the developer to perform all the pagination logic and decide what appears on each page, Silverlight does not automagically do that for you.

How to make a scroller on a micro-processor/-controller?

I would like to write a text scroller on a micro-processor with 4 5x7 displays in ANSI-C.
Does anyone know of example source code or anything that can help me get started?
Update
This is the user manual for the micro-processor board I have. On PDF page 17 is a picture of the board with the displays.
The code is written in an IDE called "zds2_Z8Encore493.exe" and then flashed to the micro-controller over serial port.
I would like the text to cascade from one to the next to the next column-by-column, so it is smooth.
There may be a better way, but I would store the text in a block of RAM, and in the routines that update the displays I would include a value to offset the starting point, possibly with a wrap-around to the start. The you store a counter which increments the "global" offset (scrolling).
You can then use string[offset + display-width + scroll_position] as the start pointer, but you need to detect the end and wrap round or just stop.

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