preview and print pdf(or html) files

[Igor Anic]

I have few reports which i need to distribute to a lot of clients and I
have following requirements on the clients:
- preview reports
- print reports
- count the number of printed pages (if the report is printed), this is
absolutely necessary functionality because clients are charged by the
number of printed pages

Currently I'm transferring dataset to the clients, and printing reports
using PrinterDocument...
I found that pretty clumsy, specially when adding new report: I had to
upgrade server, clients, create new printing functionality...

I was thinking about some other options and the most interesting so far
is to use SQL Server Reporting Services for creating reports on the
server. Clients will then download/open reports.
Adding new reports will be as simple as generating new report on the RS.

The missing part is a component for preview/print/count pages on the
client. I need options to view html or pdf reports on the client.



So I'm looking for the component which could preview/print/count pages
of the html or pdf document.

Any experience with such a component.
Any other ides for the the solution of the problem are welcome too.
Thanks,
Igor.

 

[Tommy Carlier]

I have few reports which i need to distribute to a lot of clients and I
have following requirements on the clients:
- preview reports
- print reports
- count the number of printed pages (if the report is printed), this is
absolutely necessary functionality because clients are charged by the
number of printed pages

Currently I'm transferring dataset to the clients, and printing reports
using PrinterDocument...
I found that pretty clumsy, specially when adding new report: I had to
upgrade server, clients, create new printing functionality...

I was thinking about some other options and the most interesting so far
is to use SQL Server Reporting Services for creating reports on the
server. Clients will then download/open reports.
Adding new reports will be as simple as generating new report on the RS.

The missing part is a component for preview/print/count pages on the
client. I need options to view html or pdf reports on the client.



So I'm looking for the component which could preview/print/count pages
of the html or pdf document.

Any experience with such a component.
Any other ides for the the solution of the problem are welcome too.
Thanks,
Igor.

Our company had the same problem.
Printing PDF files in .NET is not a real option. I've looked at dozens
of commercial components, and none of them offered the quality
printing that
Adobe Reader does. The Adobe Reader can't be automated for printing.
Licensing the Adobe Library is extremely expensive.

We use SQL Server Reporting Services, which has its flaws, but is
generally a very good product. When we need to print a report, we
generate the report in EMF-format (1 EMF-image per page), compress
each EMF-page, merge the pages in a binary format, send it to the
client, which extracts the EMF-pages and prints them. EMF is the only
vector-based image format that Reporting Services can export to and
that is natively supported by the .NET-framework for displaying
on-screen (which we do: we have a special viewer that can display
pages, navigate, zoom in/out, ...) and printing.
The only disadvantage is that exporting a report from Reporting
Services to EMF-format is very slow for the moment. If your report
only has a few pages, it's ok, but for many pages, it's too slow.

If you want to use our component (which we currently only use for our
own products), I could try to persuade my boss to release the
component as a commercial product. Just send an e-mail to
tommy.carlier AT weblications.be

 

[Igor Anic]

Interesting solution.

I thought that the situation with the pdf components is much better. I
saw so much of them on the web.

I'll try to found a easier solution, although my chances are getting
smaller and smaller :-(.

Thanks,
Igor.

 

[Tommy Carlier]

Interesting solution.

I thought that the situation with the pdf components is much better. I
saw so much of them on the web.

I'll try to found a easier solution, although my chances are getting
smaller and smaller :-(.

Thanks,
Igor.

I've tried a lot of them. Most components let you GENERATE pdf, but
they don't read EXISTING PDF-documents. And the ones that do, usually
don't display or print out those documents nicely.
The problem is that the PDF-format has many different versions and
features, and it's easy to write PDF, using only a subset of the
features, but it's extremely difficult to support all the possible
versions and features.