C#, WPF, and Fixed Documents. Let’s Talk Printing.
Full Disclosure, this article is intended for desktop applications using the WPF Graphical Interface Library. This isn’t intended for Web applications where printing should really be handled by the front-end or browser.
Printing was the killer feature for computers in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Because people weren’t used to reading content on screens, we printed it out for review and comment. When changes needed to be made, someone went into “the system” and modified the data or the content, and then printed it out for others to review. It was a simpler time. Printing from an application was a time consuming process that had to account for precise placement of page elements. It was the original front-end development platform.
Fast forward to today where everything is in the browser, nothing gets printed, unless it does. Even when it does get printed, good old CSS saves the day for most web applications. PDF export is also a great example of how printing has been mostly ignored by developers. Laying out a PDF document is great, but what do you do when all you want is to place simple text on a page to fit a pre-printed form? PDF won’t save you, but you could lay out the text and translate that to a PDF layout. Your mileage may vary, but it still requires the developer to know how to lay out a PDF document at the code level, or at…