Printing Formatted Documents VB.net
I need to find a simple way to create, view, and print formatted documents through my windows forms vb.net program. Right now I'm using Crystal Reports to format the documents, but Crystal Reports is extreme overkill because all I need is the formatting features, none of the database or reporting features.
I need to be able to create a pdf and print reports that look like this: http://simplemortgagepro.com/samples/
Does anyone know how I can get that done?
I'm using Visual Studio 2010 and VB.net.
Thanks
Re: Printing Formatted Documents VB.net
A 'simple' way does not exist. Overkill it may be but your current method is frankly as simple as it gets. If you want to get into creating pdf from scratch you'll need something like itextsharp behind you but it's not for the faint of heart!
Re: Printing Formatted Documents VB.net
I was thinking about adding a webbrowser control, creating an html document with the formatting, and then printing from that. It's crazy that printing a nice document is so difficult.
Re: Printing Formatted Documents VB.net
Quote:
It's crazy that printing a nice document is so difficult.
Hmm. I'm guessing you weren't around in the time of daisy wheels and ribbons then? Those of us that were think modern day printing's a breeze! It's just that as a programmer you come up against the actual nuts and bolts of instructing the printer which are hidden from you in a commercial word processor or dtp package. That's part of why such programs cost the big bucks!