Is there any printing support in Silverlight (1.1)?

I was just thinking that it might be convenient to be able to print say a Canvas and its contents directly from client side code instead of having to replicate that drawing code server side to generate XPS or PDF to send to the browser. It would also lessen the load on the server having to generate those documents.

Also, I was hoping we might see a Silverlight based cross platform XPS viewer to replace the rather "heavy" WPF-based Windows only one now available. And if Silverlight could generate and pass that XPS document to such a viewer (or have "XPSView" as a control) all on the client side that would be pretty neat too.

Being able to catch a print event and return either say a canvas object or an xaml file could prove invaluable without being to much of a strain on current design plans.

Thanks,

I would like to add my vote for printing support.

 In scenarios where you have Silverlight applications (no html controls just a slick Silverlight interface) I can see many situations where printing support would be required. i.e. printing an order confirmation, printing off a report, a logged call reference number, an article etc. Yes you could probably take the content and add it to an aspx page but then you may have to worry about formatting (i.e. how will it look on a Mac compared to IE on Windows etc) which is something we wanted to stop worrying about.

If I remember correctly Flash had this problem a while back but have now overcome it. I know it may be a little box to some but ticking these boxes (printing support, back button support, history support, search engine friendliness etc) makes it a lot easier to justify it's use (over something like Flash).

Thanks,

John
 

John Mandia
http://weblogs.asp.net/jmandia
http://www.silverlightseo.net/

john_mandia:

I would like to add my vote for printing support.

Me too. 

Make love not war.
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I vote for printing support as well. Of course, much like opening and saving files, I would expect users to have to explicitly allow the printing to happen.

We have a product that allows clients to "print-on-demand" from an XML content repository.

We are currently limited to the layout and styling that HTML can support because our users will not accept the "heaviness" of PDFs. We are also subject to the various rendering decisions and font availability of different browsers and versions, including different headers and footers, margin sizes, and low-resolution graphics.

It would be easy to directly produce XPS on our server and send it to Silverlight. If Silverlight had the ability to print, we could produce reliable page layout, fast and high-quality output.

I vote for printing as well. its critical to desktop applications that plan to use silverlight

This is a feature I would like as well, we currently have an application written in flash that we would like to port but are unable to because of the lack of printing support.

Yes please,

We are using XAML vector elements for generating maps and floor plans in Silverlight. In this domain printing support is a must. To start with normal printing through the browsers print functionally will do as long as the aspect ratio of the graphics is preserved (this is not the case right now)

Later on it would be great to be able to control what will be printed through pre/post printing events, also possibilities to contol print scale would be great.

 Regards,

Tim

another vote for printing support.

We would use it to print labels. Since labels use non-standard paper sizes and special (not default) printers it is hard for users to print generated PDFs or print using browser. Ideally we need  to specify page/job information programmatically without any user interaction.

Vladimir 

Joe Robe

Did I got it right? We're talking about making professional applications without printing support? C'mon... In my company we've been using .NET controls hosted in Internet Explorer, printing was available, so we expect to continue in the same manner.

Of course, printing is not needed if SilverLight is targeting entertainment software, dunno-what-to-do-today software, games, etc...

Igor

Another vote for printingsupport.

Crossplattform Businessapps with printing would blow away most competitors.
Without printing there would be only laughing.

Another vote for printing support!

We would love to move our app online and this is our number one barrier.  HTML printing doesn't give us the pagination and header/footer control we require.  Embedding .NET WinForms will work but being able to use Silverlight would make deployment/user access MUCH easier.

I'll vote too. We would like to be able to create an app where we let the user design their own trading card and then be able to print it. We would also love to have a way to store the contents of the canvas to an image. Is this possible?

I don't know why I didn't put my vote in here a lot earlier, but yeah, printing support would be great.  As it is now, I have to use GDI to create an image from the xaml, and then print the image.  Which, by the way Bill, is the only way I know of right now to convert xaml to an image.  It wasn't all that hard for me, but my app isn't using too many different xaml elements, either.

Thanks
Yasser Makram
My Blog: http://www.silverlightrecipes.com
Sr. Architect
Santeon Inc. Microsoft Silverlight Partner, Solution Provider

I vote for it too!

---------------------------------------------
Programmer, Wivvies.com

I vote for it !

Another vote!

I would also like to add the ability for the client to send back the current state of the Canvas to be captured by the server, kind of like a screenshot of the current view but sent to the server for processing (logging, export to PDF, generate an image, etc...) 

 Printing would be vital, export to different formats (ie pdf) would be nice. Maybe plugging in with the Reportviewer?

One more vote!

 I vote for this as well. We are currently using Java for a solution as Flash & Flex would not work for our needs. We also needed the ability to send straight to the printer without a print dialog. This is because we needed to control the number of copies being printed.

Dan

I vote for it !

I vote for it too. I am fine with creating Postcript code myself (using XSLT from XAML, or programmatically from DOM)

Please add printing support, in my view it is critical for serious applications!

Elmer

Nah Printing is for wimps 

Printing has its place.I want it as soon as it can be established.I have more in my brains than some people.And if I am able to print out a hard copy I can put it in a file for later reference and don't have to try and remember.What was it and where was it.A wimp would never be that smart.

Yes ! We need the canvas printing !

Printing is a deal-breaker.   Do we really need to vote on this?

Tim Wood:

Printing is a deal-breaker.   Do we really need to vote on this?

 You are absolutely correct, but they don't otherwise seem to be getting the point. I'm starting to get the feeling they don't care about giving customers what they need. Instead just the features that have no real business value, which I can only assume they feel they do have business value, just not to the real world.

*Gasp*   No printing?  Geesh. Lame.

I need it TODAY.

I vote for it too!

 I would like to add my vote for Printing.

Vote For Printing. It's very essential for silverlight to support pdf and generate pdf from canvas. 

Votes for printing AND RenderTargetBitmap supprt. These are dealbreakers for several apps we're looking at. Thanks.