{"id":28423,"date":"2007-01-12T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2007-01-12T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2007\/01\/12\/how-do-i-print-the-contents-of-a-rich-text-control\/"},"modified":"2007-01-12T10:00:02","modified_gmt":"2007-01-12T10:00:02","slug":"how-do-i-print-the-contents-of-a-rich-text-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20070112-02\/?p=28423","title":{"rendered":"How do I print the contents of a rich text control?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nFor some reason, people are really puzzled by rich edit printing.\nI’m no expert on printing, but even I was able to figure it out.\nThe kernel is the EM_FORMATRANGE<\/code> message.\nEach time you call it, a little bit more of the rich text control\nis printed, and the message returns the index of the first\nunprinted character,\nwhich you can pass back in to print the next chunk.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe rest is just setting up and tearing down.\n<\/p>\n

\nBOOL PrintRTF(HWND hwnd, HDC hdc)\n{\n int cxPhysOffset = GetDeviceCaps(hdc, PHYSICALOFFSETX);\n int cyPhysOffset = GetDeviceCaps(hdc, PHYSICALOFFSETY);\n int cxPhys = GetDeviceCaps(hdc, PHYSICALWIDTH);\n int cyPhys = GetDeviceCaps(hdc, PHYSICALHEIGHT);\n SendMessage(hwnd, EM_SETTARGETDEVICE, (WPARAM)hdc, cxPhys);\n FORMATRANGE fr;\n fr.hdc = hdc;\n fr.hdcTarget = hdc;\n fr.rc.left = cxPhysOffset;\n fr.rc.right = cxPhysOffset + cxPhys;\n fr.rc.top = cyPhysOffset;\n fr.rc.bottom = cyPhysOffset + cyPhys;\n SendMessage(hwnd, EM_SETSEL, 0, (LPARAM)-1);\n SendMessage(hwnd, EM_EXGETSEL, 0, (LPARAM)&fr.chrg);\n BOOL fSuccess = TRUE;\n while (fr.chrg.cpMin < fr.chrg.cpMax && fSuccess) {\n  fSuccess = StartPage(hdc) > 0;\n  if (!fSuccess) break;\n  int cpMin = SendMessage(hwnd, EM_FORMATRANGE, TRUE, (LPARAM)&fr);\n  if (cpMin <= fr.chrg.cpMin) {\n   fSuccess = FALSE;\n   break;\n  }\n  fr.chrg.cpMin = cpMin;\n  fSuccess = EndPage(hdc) > 0;\n }\n SendMessage(hwnd, EM_FORMATRANGE, FALSE, 0);\n return fSuccess;\n}\n<\/pre>\n
\nWe start by getting the dimensions of the page and\ntelling the rich edit control what we intend to render to\nby using the EM_SETTARGETDEVICE<\/code> message.\nNext, we need to fill out our FORMATRANGE<\/code>,\nwhich we do by specifying the HDC<\/code> we are\nrendering to, as well as the paper dimensions.\nBut what about the character range?\nWe are lazy and let the rich edit control take care of it for us:\nWe select all the text and then ask the rich edit control to\ntell us what we just selected, which comes back in the form\nof a CHARRANGE<\/code>, which is exactly what we needed.\n<\/p>\n
\nNext comes the printing loop.\nWhile there is still text to print (and we haven’t encountered\nan error), we start a new page,\nask the rich edit control to render that page,\nremember where the next page should begin,\nand end the current page.\nThere’s a little sanity check in there to make sure that the\nrich edit control made forward progress; if not, then we’ll\nend up in an infinite loop spewing out blank pages!\n(I have no idea whether this is theoretically possible, but I’m\ngoing to protect against it just the same.)\n<\/p>\n
\nOnce the printing loop is complete, we clean up by sending\none last EM_FORMATRANGE<\/code> message to tell the\nrich edit control that we’re all done and it can discard the\ninformation it cached.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe can take all the information we’ve learned over the\npast few days to make a simple “print RTF” program.\n<\/p>\n
\nint CALLBACK\n_tWinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,\n          LPTSTR lpCmdLine, int nShowCmd)\n{\n LoadLibrary(TEXT(\"riched20.dll\"));\n HWND hwndRTF = CreateWindow(RICHEDIT_CLASS, NULL,\n                     ES_MULTILINE | WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW,\n                     CW_USEDEFAULT, CW_USEDEFAULT,\n                     CW_USEDEFAULT, CW_USEDEFAULT,\n                     NULL, 0, 0, 0);\n if (hwndRTF) {\n  SendMessage(hwndRTF, EM_EXLIMITTEXT, 0, -1);\n  if (FillRichEditFromFile(hwndRTF, lpCmdLine)) {\n   PRINTDLG pd = { sizeof(pd) };\n   pd.Flags = PD_RETURNDC | PD_RETURNDEFAULT;\n   if (PrintDlg(&pd)) {\n    DOCINFO di = { sizeof(di) };\n    di.lpszDocName = TEXT(\"Sample Printout\");\n    if (StartDoc(pd.hDC, &di) > 0) {\n     if (PrintRTF(hwndRTF, pd.hDC)) {\n      EndDoc(pd.hDC);\n     } else {\n      AbortDoc(pd.hDC);\n     }\n    }\n    GlobalFree(pd.hDevMode);\n    GlobalFree(pd.hDevNames);\n    DeleteDC(pd.hDC);\n   }\n  }\n  DestroyWindow(hwndRTF);\n }\n return 0;\n}\n<\/pre>\n
\nThere’s not really much going on here; it’s all just glue and\nnecessary typing.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe create a rich edit control and fill it with the file\npassed on the command line.\nWe then ask the PrintDlg<\/code> function to give us a\nDC to the user’s default printer.\nWe give the document a title, start the document, print the rich\ntext into the document, and then end the document (or abort it\nif something went wrong during printing).\nA little cleaning up, and we’re all done.\nA tiny program to print an arbitrary RTF document with\nno fanfare whatsoever.\n<\/p>\n
\nSee?\nIt’s not so hard.\nOnce you find EM_FORMATRANGE<\/code> the rest is just doing\nthe obvious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For some reason, people are really puzzled by rich edit printing. I’m no expert on printing, but even I was able to figure it out. The kernel is the EM_FORMATRANGE message. Each time you call it, a little bit more of the rich text control is printed, and the message returns the index of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-28423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
For some reason, people are really puzzled by rich edit printing. I’m no expert on printing, but even I was able to figure it out. The kernel is the EM_FORMATRANGE message. Each time you call it, a little bit more of the rich text control is printed, and the message returns the index of the […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}