Print to PDF of multi-tabbed form

When you print or print to file (e.g. PDF) a form that has multiple tabs, only the currently selected tabs are printed.  

You can print multiple times after selecting each tab and perhaps merge the files, but this is not scalable. 

Is it possible to automate this printing to a PDF all of the tabs?  If possible, perhaps you can show how to do this in a groovy script?

 

Thanks,

Jon

I don't think this would be at all easy. In principle its possible, but its difficutl to see how you would handle the layout of the different tabs in a generic manner that handled all form designs. Another related limitation is scrolbars in tables. Paper doesn't handle tabs or scroll bars well!

I think its better to think of creating a form specifically for the purpose of printing that didn't use tabs. You can use the normal form for viewing data, and when you want to print switch to the print from and print that.

Tim

Hi Tim,

We were thinking about this in a very specific manner.

Each tab is like a separate page -- so just like the current tab prints to a single page, we would just like the option that all tabs print to separate page.

I.e. the layout is just as simple as a single tab on a page.

Brock.

P.S.  We will be back to ask for the scrollbars to work on a paper printout later -- I am sure someone will ask :)

I don't know how feasible this is - I'll need to ask.

Tim 

Tim -- didn't hear back from you -- hoping that you got a chance to talk w/ the developers about this.

Hi,

generic solution is really pretty complex as it was said earlier. We can look at implementation of a special case when there is only one widget in the form - one tabbed pane. I added it to our bugtracking system last week, but I'm afraid we won't be able to resolve this in the following release, probably sometimes later.

I tried to create a simple script which uses. How to use it:

• create a form with tabbed pane as only widget in top level in the form.


• create a script in the same datatree. Paste the text of the following script into your new script


• change the name of form in the script, it's commented there. It's also pretty easy to improve the script to let user to choose form and then open it


• open script + form


• run the script

A few more comments:

• the script uses also undocumented methods, so please do not consider this as official example using IJC APIs. It means it can stop working in next version.


• It does iteration and in each loop switches the tab, shows print dialog, ask for file name and ask for confirmation that the tab is printed (this is just prevention of continue with next loop with modal dialog... really workaround)


• import com.im.ijc.core.api.views.*

import com.im.ijc.core.api.cookie.*;

import org.openide.*;


// Fill form name - can be done using chooser. Form must be opened when running this script

form = dataTree.views.items.find { it.name == "Tabs" }

topComponent = AbstractViewTopComponent.viewRegistry.getIfOpened(form)

printer = topComponent.lookup.lookup(AdvancedPrintCookie.class)


// expecting form contains only one widget which is the tabbed pane

handle = topComponent.widgetContainer.getWidgets(true).iterator().next()

tabbedPane = handle.widget.browseModeComponent

for (int i = 0; i < tabbedPane.tabCount; i++) {

    tabbedPane.selectedIndex = i

    printer.printToFile()

    // need modal dialog to wait till previous tab is printed

    name = tabbedPane.getTitleAt(i)

    DialogDisplayer.default.notify(new NotifyDescriptor.Message("Confirm tab $name printed"))

}

 

 

Petr

This works basically as described.  Thanks, but we are looking for something more automated (no print dialogs) and/or row-centric (one pdf file for each row).  

In this groovy script scenario, is there a way to automatically fill out the print dialog?

For example, I would like to print each tab by selecting the current row using the previous or saved print dialog selections.  Perhaps the name of the file can be generated using information on the form and passed to the print dialog.  

Hi Jon,

I'm sorry for late response. We've already added this into the task list. And we are going to look at it in one of upcoming relelases.

I think putting information from each row and printing one row into one file might be more difficult. We are going to investigate the option when a form has only one tabbed panel then each will be printed on a separate page into the same file or printing queue.

Regards,

Petr