[thelist] Format/Print server-side files - Help?

Jay Turley jay at weberrific.org
Mon Jul 24 11:02:24 CDT 2000


Hi everyone-

We are currently creating a reporting application for one of our clients. 
SQLServer/ASP/IIS - no great shakes, right? Well, one of the requirements 
is that the clients (at branch locations across the globe) be able to print 
out the results of some of the searches. Additionally, the files 
(consisting of lists of addresses) must be able to be printed in one of 
five different formats (mailing labels, letterhead, etc.). All users are 
running Windows, so we do not have to worry about them not having the 
standard windows set of applications or cross-platform browsing.

Printing the HTML page is not an option - there is just not enough 
formatting control, esp. w/r/t the page-breaks. Although you can page-break 
in IE, you have little to no control over the placement of the content on 
the page.

Our next thought was to create a server-side text file with ASCII control 
characters for tabs, page breaks, line feeds, etc. Then, this document is 
renamed with a ".doc" extension, because NotePad will not pick up the 
formatting characters, while Word will. Although this works to some extent, 
we still have no control over the page layout, as Word uses its default 
margins and font size to format this quasi-document.

It seems that our only real choice is to create a quick VB application that 
will need to be downloaded and installed before the users can print files. 
They would then select the formatting client-side and print whatever they 
wanted. However, now we are talking about clueless users having to download 
a file, save it in the appropriate directory, open a new application, load 
the proper report file from the right location, and then print it, and this 
seems like it may be a lot to ask. Plus we are getting cramped on time, and 
are not sure about the overhead involved with creating and supporting an 
application like this...

If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know. Our current 
brainstorming list includes .pdf (no experience with creating them on the 
fly) and using the Word object model (same problem plus we don't really 
know if this can be accesses through VBScript).

I appreciate any and all help. Thanks,

(A tip is owed - once the current crisis is over)

- Jay Turley ---------------------------------------------------------
  http://www.weberrific.org
 "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology"






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