I have a task to print a batch of illustrator files.
There are 8 AI documents and 1 CSV file. In the CSV file there are info that I need to change in the AI document before printing.
Actually I am doing this by using the AI reference in Visual Studio and using doc.printOut(), my problem is that it sends 1 file per printOut() to the printer and it is not that fast, the more printers I have, the more delay to send the document between the printers.
I was wondering if I could use another library to print this or use another function from this library. Maybe even using some batch actions inside illustrator, but I guess that wouldn't change much in performance, Well, I don't know.
Was reading some threads here and saw that the AI file is nearly identical to a PDF file, maybe load the documents within a adobe PDF reference in C# would help to print faster?
Any tips please?
Looking at the VBScript reference for printOut() I'm guessing that Illustrator does a lot of work before firing off a given print job (the PrintOptions object is a collection of options each of which has a dozen or so different settings to twiddle... no thank you).
I suggest you SaveAs() your file to PDF, and print that instead. PDFSaveOptions has a crap-load of options itself, but it looks like (almost?) all of them are optional.
Related
How to read font file stream from WinRT platform? I need to get font file content from C# UWP. As far as you probably know there is no way to read files from Fonts folder directly. FilePicker is also not an option for me, since it's not a user responsibility to choose this folder. I found the way to enumerate font names using DirectWrite (C++) and then wrapping it with COM component which will be available in C# (https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/FontExplorer-lets-you-f01d415e#content), I wonder if the similar thing can be done to read font file content as byte[] or Stream?
You cannot directly read the TTF file from a UWP app without the user navigating to the file manually. The UWP application is not allowed to open files without the user being prompted unless they are in specific locations.
Also, as mentioned in a comment, many fonts may not be distributed or embedded without special licenses.
Good news: PDF export doesn't make much sense in windows 10. Windows 10 has build-in PDF printer. So, it's better to kill 2 birds with one stone: implement printing and get PDF export free of charge.
Assuming you already got as far as you have created IDWriteFontFile instance, then it's easy to read arbitrary file fragment:
Get file reference key with IDwriteFontFile::GetReferenceKey();.
Get loader interface with IDWriteFontFile::GetLoader();
Create stream instance with IDWriteFontFileLoader::CreateStreamFromKey() using key from step 1.
Use IDWriteFontFileStream::ReadFileFragment/ReleaseFileFragment to read from file stream to your buffer.
I'm comfortable generating Word documents using Aspose.Word (which can also save as a PDF) but I've recently been asked to do the same thing using a PDF as the starter template. We recently bought Aspose.Total and whilst Aspose.Pdf looks like it can do some manipulations it doesn't look to be all that flexible/easy (like adding a big line of text and getting it to wrap, and shifting other content down the page if it takes up more space).
What would be the best way of using a PDF as a template for what is basically a bit like a mail merge from a database? Should I turn it into a PDF form and merge it from an XML data source? Is this even viable or would such a form still have a limitation on spacing (so that longer lines/paragraphs of text won't reflow the document where necessary)?
From what I can tell it doesn't look like InDesign can be manipulated in c# even via a COM object (which would be nasty on a web server anyway).
If I recreated the InDesign/PDF as a Word document I'm sure I could work wonders, but you know what these publishing types are like, who think Word documents are the tool of the devil. These PDFs are never going to a professional printer anyway; they're just brochures for a client to download from a web page (based on information in a database) for printing/use at home.
You have indeed many solutions for such a web to print project. Choosing one is a matter of budget, requirements and users count. Placing dynamic contents can be done at the simpliest with PDF forms fillable with xml data.
On the other hand you can work with InDesign Server and output PDF based on InDesign templates. That's generally a good choice when a large amount of users needs to get rich pdf files in parallel. But the costs are heavy.
You can also envision A pitstop server or Callas PDFToolBox Server to place dynamic texts based on variables as supplied by you. The good point here is that you don't need much coding here. Those apps are ready to use.
You can at last consider command line tools. A few of them may have some useful commands such as pdfTk or cPdf to merge texts.
I have an task of converting bunch of formats like .pdf, .doc, .jpg, .xls, .txt, .bmp file types into .png format. I found a print driver that does that.
But how do I connect to that printer driver in .net? This will a server side component. I need to print documents into a folder using this print driver.
I am wondering how that can be done.
Thanks
Based on your updated comments, it sounds as if you are looking to convert a variety of images and document types to a single common image type. The process of taking one of the several possible source formats you mention and convert it to a bitmapped format such as .PNG is referred to as RENDERING or RASTERIZING. You want to take one of the input formats, render it to a bitmap representation, then write it to a file in .PNG format. While it certainly might be possible to do this using a print driver, to do so, you would typically be relying on an installed application that would allow you to pass the source document to it for printing to the driver. For this to work, each of the source file types you want to be able to handle this way needs to have an application installed which can take actions from the shell and do what you request. So for example if you want to do this with a .DOC file, you need Microsoft Word installed as it does properly respond to the PRINT shell command. However, the limitation with the shell based method is that it is always going to print to the DEFAULT system printer. So your driver would need to be setup as the default printer for the machine you are going to run your process on. Therefore you would need to see if each of the source types you want to be able to handle have an installed or installable application which will allow you to print them using the shell and the PRINT action verb.
Reference URLs:
Windows Shell Verbs and File Associations
Creating Shortcut Menu Handlers
The problem with this technique is not all applications respond to the PRINT verb correctly or at all. This usually works with all the major Microsoft applications, but you should test any other document types you want to support before going much further with this technique.
This also raises other questions that this doesn't even begin to address such as what to do about multiple page formats. You listed a few image types that are straight-forward and can be converted to PNG files pretty directly. But how do you want to render a multiple page Word document files into PNG format? Do you intend for only one very large PNG with all the pages one after another? Or do you intend for one PNG file per corresponding source document page? The print driver method might not give you very much control over that.
Depending on some of these details and just how much control and reliability you need in the process, you might want to consider a completely different route to your process. Maybe you should consider using tools/libraries that can read the source file formats you want to support and render them directly, after which you can save into your PNG files. One library I have used in the past that would seem to fit and allow you a high degree of control over the conversion (rendering/rasterization) process is LeadTools. It is a fairly pricey product, but my experience with it has been that it does support a wide variety of formats reliably.
LeadTools PDF and Document Readers SDK
There may be some other open source tools available that you could pull together to support this type of functionality, but I'm not familiar with any to point you to anything specific. But hopefully this helps give you some information to look at putting together a process that might be more reliable and give you greater control than trying to coerce a printer driver to do something you might not quite be able to make work reliably.
Server-side component implies something that doesn't have a human sitting at it (at least, not the human that is trying to use that printer). If this is the case then a print driver will not work - Print drivers that write their output to disk instead of a device always, in my experience, ask the user to select a place to save the file (present a Save As dialog).
To elaborate a little bit on what Boo mentioned :
Depending on the printer driver you are using, you may be able to tell it where to save your file.
The problem is by using a printer, how it normally works is that you can print from any application to a .png file. But the application itself has to know how to open and render (not talk to the printer) the content of the original file.
To continue down this path, you have to make sure your server component knows how to read and render content of each file type (.jpg, .pdf, .doc, etc.).
Assuming your server component knows how to render the content, the next step from here is to use the .NET Printing namespace to print your content to the .png printer.
For more details go to : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188767.aspx
I am working in a desktop project in C# with .net. This project has a function that generates some information and i would like to print this generated info as a document (may be .doc, .pdf, etc). Summarizing, i need:
Get the data generated by a function;
Generate a document containing these information structured with title, texts and tables (things that every document have);
Print it;
I thought generating an .html file (because it's simple to generate this kind of file), but i couldn't find a way to print it directly from my program.
Which extension of file would you recommend to insert this kind of information and print it directly from my program??
Thanks in advance.
Here's an easy way that uses a RichTextBox
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/printing/simpleprintingcs.aspx
It's not trivial to print a PDF, HTML, or a doc unless you are going to use external programs or third-party libraries. ImageMagick/GhostScript could help you print PDF.
Disclaimer: I work at Atalasoft -- If you are willing to use commercial software, my company makes PDF rendering components for .NET. There are companies that do the same for HTML.
Directly? Open printer port...
Or you can do it with framework classes:
How to: Print with a WebBrowser Control
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b0wes9a3.aspx
I've tried CutePDF, but programmatic access needs to happen via registry entries, which isn't thread safe. I've also tried PDF Writer, but program has serious problems when multiple users are logged into the same machine trying to print at the same time.
I'm looking for an easy C# or VBA command to which i can say -- print this .xls, and it does it without me having to jump through hoops.
Any suggestions?
I think you'll be in for a hard search there. Most of the "Source to PDF" converters are based on the print stream, where you print whatever you want into a standard printstream which is wrapped/converted to PDF. And the printstream(spooler) is very async (not threadsafe) and prone to problems with multiple users on the same machine.
There are a very few programmatically solutions out there and I think they all cost money, but I might be wrong.
Of course you might use Open Office -- the export as pdf works quite nicely in writer.
Maybe Calc has similar support?
Also see other answers tagged openoffice.org
for instance openoffice-command-line-pdf-creation