Printing Text
Using the Printer object further, you can also apply formatting to the text
you output by setting the Font, and its associated FontSize, FontBold, FontItalic,
FontStrikeThru and FontUnderline properties. To change the font, simply change
the FontName property. For example,
Printer.FontName = "Tahoma"
changes the font to Tahoma. To change the size, just call Printer.FontSize.
Most of the other formatting options are just boolean (ie True or False), which
makes it even easier to apply formatting. The code below gives a simple demonstration.
With Printer
Printer.Print "Normal Line"
.FontBold = True
Printer.Print "Bold Line"
.FontItalic = True
Printer.Print "Bold and Italic Line"
.FontBold = False
.FontItalic = False
Printer.Print "Second Normal Line"
.EndDoc
End With
Note
Although I am using a With statement, I still have to write Printer.Print
for outputting the text. This is another 'quirk' of VB - the Print statement
is not actually belong to the Printer object, or in fact any other object
in VB. If you search for Print in the Object Browser (press F2), you won't
find it anywhere. Print is in fact a statement that VB interprets on its
own, and outputs it according to the object before the Print statement.
If you call PictureBox1.Print, it will 'print' the text into the PictureBox
control. As such, the Print function behaves just as if it were an object
of PictureBox or Printer. However, the designers of VB obviously didn't
extend this behavior to With statements.... |
For a full list of font options, go to the Object Browser (F2), and select
Printer from the Classes list.
One other thing worth noting regarding formatting... If you are using the RichTextBox
control, you don't need to worry about applying all the formatting - there is
some code using API calls which does it all for you, including page margins!
Click here to see that code.
Setting the alignment of text isn't quite so simple, VB doesn't provide an
align property. Instead, we need to work out where the middle of the page is,
and then take into account the width of the text. Take a look at this code,
which prints the page number in the middle of the page.
sMsg = "Page " & Printer.Page ' Print Page number
HWidth = Printer.TextWidth(sMsg) / 2 ' Get one-half width.
HHeight = Printer.TextHeight(sMsg) /2 ' Get one-half height.
Printer.CurrentX = Printer.ScaleWidth / 2 - HWidth
Printer.CurrentY = Printer.ScaleHeight / 2 - HHeight
Printer.Print sMsg
This code uses the CurrentX and CurrentY to change the position of where the
text is outputted, centers the position, and prints the page number using the
Printer's Page property. If you want the text in the middle at the top of the
page, simply comment out the Printer.CurrentY line.