[wx-dev] Needing infos and test/sample application(s) for wxWidgets printing framework

[Stefan Csomor]

Hi Ulrich
 
> after releasing version 0.8.0 of my wxWidgets component wxPdfDocument
> about a month ago I started working on an implementation of a drawing
> context wxPdfDC for PDF output based on wxPdfDocument.
> 
> Does it make sense that I continue to work on such a class? Or are
> there
> already other plans how wxWidgets will use/support PDF in the future?


For the wxGraphics backends that offer good PDF support, I think it is
advisable to go through that route. For all other systems, I think a
wxPdfDC is needed, otherwise the feature won't be used. Of course it
would be great if you could implement it as a wxGraphicsContext
subclass. 

I don't think you should model this too much after the real printing
process. Most Page Setup Information is not necessary (how many copies,
which tray to use, the quality etc). We could have a property array for
the constructor to pass in the default page setup, and other fine tuning
parameters that may or may not be supported (embedding, compliance etc).
In a DC we have a BeginPage and an EndPage, the first would have to be
overloaded with a version taking a page rectangle, but that's about it,
I think

> How should fonts be handled in general? For example the current
> implementation of wxPostScriptDC seems to support only the standard
> set
> of PostScript fonts Courier, Helvetica and Times-Roman which contain
> only Western European characters in addition to ASCII. Isn't that
> very
> limiting especially in Unicode builds?

IMHO fonts must be embedded, any truetype or postscript font that is
allowed for embedding and exists on the users system must be usable
without any preparation, or command line utility. 

Best,

Stefan