Yet Another Tutorial on producing hardcopy
Just the "heart" of the answer

Page URL: lt3Nhardc-multpg-intro.htm

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What this page has for you

I'm going to try to sketch the CORE of the Lazarus code needed to print out 3 pages of ink-on-paper.

Obviously, this would need a some "fleshing out", but I hope it will get you started. With what's on this page, you should get three pages of hardcopy for one button click. (Well, two, if you count the "OK" on the printer dialog.)

The "application" is going to have one button.

"Behind the scenes", unseen by the user, there will also be a printer dialog on the form.

When you press that, three pages will be printed, with a line of text on each.

What does it take?

What I know mostly came from the "official" page on producing hardcopy with Lazarus. (An more extensive discussion by me is available, too.)

You need to install the "official" printer support package, Printer4Lazarus. (Details at the pages cited a moment ago. As are details of many of the things I will refer to in this.

Any application using that must have "Printers" added to its "uses" clause.

In theory, the heart of all you then need is...

Printer.DocBegin;
  Printer.Canvas.TextOut(10,20,'First page');
Printer.DocEnd;

Printer.DocBegin;
  Printer.Canvas.TextOut(10,20,'Second page');
Printer.DocEnd;

Printer.DocBegin;
  Printer.Canvas.TextOut(10,20,'Third page');
Printer.DocEnd;

A fine theory.

First "necessary frill".

Do it that way, and you are presuming that the font will be what you want, by default. So much better to establish a font on purpose, don't you think?

Printer.Canvas.Font.Name:="Courier New";//should be a font on your system
Printer.Canvas.Font.Color:=clBlack;//"clBlack" is pre-defined in Lazarus
Printer.Canvas.Font.Size:=12;//units: "Points"

I THINK that if you do this once, just before the first TextOut, that it will carry over into the next BeginDoc/EndDoc block. It might be "better", on several grounds, to do it after each BeginDoc. (You'd make a parameter-less subroutine ("DoItAgain"?), and provide other ways to keep that informed as to your wants.)

Tedious "frill"

It isn't supposed to be necessary, but I have found that at run time, the "simple" answer above often triggers a "SIGSEGV" error... whatever that may be! that may not happen on your present system... but what about next week, when Microsoft has changed your operating system again? And do you want to write something only for your present system? Will you never upgrade?

So.. the following takes us away from the "simple" demo this was supposed to be, but probably necessarily.

To print a single page:

  if PrintDialog1.execute then begin
  with Printer do
  try
    BeginDoc;
    Canvas.Font.Name := 'Courier New';
    Canvas.Font.Size := 12;
    Canvas.Font.Color := clBlack;
    Canvas.TextOut(10,20,'First page');

  finally
    EndDoc;
 

The good news is...

This gives the user a chance to abort a print job for those times when "Print it" was invoked by mistake. And...

It seems that one PrintDialog1.execute is enough. It is early days... I'm only the one-eyed king, trying to be helpful... it SEEMS that the following "works". (The only difference between this and the previous is the material in blue.)

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
    if PrintDialog1.execute then begin
  with Printer do
  try
    BeginDoc;
      Canvas.Font.Name := 'Courier New';
      Canvas.Font.Size := 12;
      Canvas.Font.Color := clBlack;
      Canvas.TextOut(10,20,'First page');
    EndDoc;

    BeginDoc;
      Canvas.TextOut(10,20,'Second page');
    EndDoc;
    BeginDoc;
      Canvas.TextOut(10,20,'Third page');
    //NO EndDoc; here... there's one to come in the "finally" clause.

finally
    EndDoc;
  end;//of try/finally
 end;//of if... execute.. then...
end;//Button1Click

So! That's it! So why have I been ten days working on something not a lot more complex? Sigh.

For further discourses about printing, see my more detailed page about generating hardcopy. (This is the one I mentioned before.) There are more "onward" links there, too.

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