High quality business papers

[tpf80]

Heres what I do for HQ documents:

1) I create a printer
2) I use QPrinter::PdfFormat to make the printer print to PDF
3) I make a QPainter with the QPrinter as the device to print to
4) I then have programmed instructions to draw and type stuff with the QPainter on the printer,
5) When I call painter.end(), it causes the PDF to be created in perfect quality.

Although this method might be somewhat time consuming at first to set up, once you get the hang of it, you can make perfect documents that print on any printer exactly as you intend them to.

Heres a very simple example code to make a pdf with some random lines and text (more of a test of how the page sizes work and how stuff fits) :

void pdf::generatePdf() {
 
	QPrinter printer; //create a printer
	printer.setOrientation(QPrinter::Portrait); //set the orientation of the paper
	printer.setOutputFormat(QPrinter::PdfFormat); //make that printer as a PDF
	printer.setOutputFileName("filename.pdf"); //set the PDF file name
	printer.setPaperSize(QPrinter::Letter); //set paper size that the PDF uses
	printer.setPageMargins (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, QPrinter::Inch); //1/2 inch margins
	QPainter painter(&printer); //make a painter, which uses this printer,
 
        //draw a blue round edged rectangle with the word "Hi" in it:
	painter.setPen(Qt::blue);
	painter.setFont(QFont("Arial", 30));
	QRectF r1(100, 200, 100, 100);
	painter.drawText(r1, Qt::AlignCenter, "Hi");
	painter.drawRoundedRect(r1, 15.0, 15.0);
 
       //draw a black line from the upper left, to the lower right side of the page
	painter.setPen(Qt::black);
	QLineF line(0, 0, 576, 756);
	painter.drawLine(line);
 
       //start a new page:
	printer.newPage();
 
       //draw a red box that reads "hello!" in it:
	painter.setPen(Qt::red);
	painter.setFont(QFont("Arial", 30));
	QRectF r2(10, 30, 100, 100);
	painter.drawText(r2, Qt::AlignCenter, "Hello!");
	painter.drawRect(r2);
 
       //draw a green dashed/dotted line in thick stroke, from upper right to lower left of page:
	QPen pen(Qt::green, 3, Qt::DashDotLine, Qt::RoundCap, Qt::RoundJoin);
	painter.setPen(pen);
	QLineF line2(0, 756, 576, 0);
	painter.drawLine(line);
 
       //end the painter causing the PDF to be generated as "filename.pdf":
	painter.end(); //done drawing, so save the PDF
 
}

void pdf::generatePdf() {
	
	QPrinter printer; //create a printer
	printer.setOrientation(QPrinter::Portrait); //set the orientation of the paper
	printer.setOutputFormat(QPrinter::PdfFormat); //make that printer as a PDF
	printer.setOutputFileName("filename.pdf"); //set the PDF file name
	printer.setPaperSize(QPrinter::Letter); //set paper size that the PDF uses
	printer.setPageMargins (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, QPrinter::Inch); //1/2 inch margins
	QPainter painter(&printer); //make a painter, which uses this printer,
	
        //draw a blue round edged rectangle with the word "Hi" in it:
	painter.setPen(Qt::blue);
	painter.setFont(QFont("Arial", 30));
	QRectF r1(100, 200, 100, 100);
	painter.drawText(r1, Qt::AlignCenter, "Hi");
	painter.drawRoundedRect(r1, 15.0, 15.0);
	
       //draw a black line from the upper left, to the lower right side of the page
	painter.setPen(Qt::black);
	QLineF line(0, 0, 576, 756);
	painter.drawLine(line);
	
       //start a new page:
	printer.newPage();
	
       //draw a red box that reads "hello!" in it:
	painter.setPen(Qt::red);
	painter.setFont(QFont("Arial", 30));
	QRectF r2(10, 30, 100, 100);
	painter.drawText(r2, Qt::AlignCenter, "Hello!");
	painter.drawRect(r2);
	
       //draw a green dashed/dotted line in thick stroke, from upper right to lower left of page:
	QPen pen(Qt::green, 3, Qt::DashDotLine, Qt::RoundCap, Qt::RoundJoin);
	painter.setPen(pen);
	QLineF line2(0, 756, 576, 0);
	painter.drawLine(line);
	
       //end the painter causing the PDF to be generated as "filename.pdf":
	painter.end(); //done drawing, so save the PDF
   
}

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you can then play around with more lines, positions, images, getting text from a database, etc which you can add using the painter. You can also print rich text documents to PDF like this, there is a text editor example that comes with Qt and within there is code to convert rich text documents to PDF if they are already in that format.

[NoRulez]

@tpf80: I don't want to draw the lines by my own, i would like to draw the lines with the finished html file. But I also read in the article that XSL-T won't be included in the QT Version 4.5.

I also looked to KD Reports for that problem, but the german phone number doesn't work. Did you know where I can have more informations about the price and/or licensing?

Regards

[tpf80]

One way you could convert the HTML straight to PDF would be like this:

QPrinter printer; //create a printer
printer.setOrientation(QPrinter::Portrait); //set the orientation of the paper
printer.setOutputFormat(QPrinter::PdfFormat); //make that printer as a PDF
printer.setOutputFileName("filename.pdf"); //set the PDF file name
QTextDocument *document = new QTextDocument();
document->setDefaultStyleSheet(styleSheet); //the style sheet QString;
document->setHtml(htmlContent); //the HTML QString;
document->print(&printer);

QPrinter printer; //create a printer
printer.setOrientation(QPrinter::Portrait); //set the orientation of the paper
printer.setOutputFormat(QPrinter::PdfFormat); //make that printer as a PDF
printer.setOutputFileName("filename.pdf"); //set the PDF file name
QTextDocument *document = new QTextDocument();
document->setDefaultStyleSheet(styleSheet); //the style sheet QString;
document->setHtml(htmlContent); //the HTML QString;
document->print(&printer);

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Note that the stylesheet is loaded separately from the html. Here is a list of the tags which the QTextDocmument can understand: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/richtext-html-subset.html

[NoRulez]

Thanks,

i will try it. Must the style sheet also contain the <style> and </style> tags?

Regards