The existing system has many reports . Using a free pdf printer like dopdf or cutepdf the user can open the report , choose the pdf printer , type in the filename and save the report as a pdf file.This seems a bit tedious
It would be nice to have the report directly saved as a pdf file just on click of a button.
Unfortunately the reporting tool component doesnt have pdf export functionality.
. Is there a way to programatically do this function using a third party component.
The printing should be silent , so that the user is not asked for a filename.Report 1 when clicked will make a file called c:\1.pdf for example.
something like this
ActivatePdfPrinter(c:\1.pdf);
printreport;
ClosePdfPrinter;
or any other method .
I use delphi but if you suggest any other tools that work in other programming languages then I can search in the right direction.
Best Answer
The free, open source PDFCreator can function as a virtual printer but it's also usable via COM. The default setup even includes COM examples.
You can check the COM samples in the SourceForge SVN repository right here: http://pdfcreator.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pdfcreator/trunk/COM/
Delphi and ActiveX get along superbly so you should not have much trouble.