OnBeforePrint Interception

Hi Martin,
Actually, you should be able to accomplish this task via a custom Print command handler. All you need to do is to invoke the PrintDialog manually.
Please refer to a sample code snippet:

Visual Basic
Partial Public Class Form1  
    Inherits Form  
    Public Sub New()  
        InitializeComponent()  
    End Sub  

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)  
        Dim report As New XtraReport1()  
        report.PrintingSystem.AddCommandHandler(New CustomPrintCommandHandler(report))  

        ' Show the report's print preview.  
        report.ShowPreview()  


    End Sub  

End Class  

Public Class CustomPrintCommandHandler  
    Implements ICommandHandler  
    Public Overridable Sub HandleCommand(ByVal command As PrintingSystemCommand, ByVal args() As Object, ByVal control As IPrintControl, ByRef handled As Boolean)  
        If (Not CanHandleCommand(command, control)) Then  
            Return  
        End If  

        ' Set handled to true to avoid the standard exporting procedure to be called.  
        handled = True  

        Dim dialog As New PrintDialog()  
        Dim res As DialogResult = dialog.ShowDialog()  
        If res = DialogResult.OK Then  
            'your code here  
            report.Print(dialog.PrinterSettings.PrinterName)  
        End If  

    End Sub  

    Private report As XtraReport = Nothing  
    Public Sub New(ByVal report As XtraReport)  
        MyBase.New()  
        Me.report = report  
    End Sub  

    Public Overridable Function CanHandleCommand(ByVal command As PrintingSystemCommand, ByVal control As IPrintControl) As Boolean  
        Return command Is PrintingSystemCommand.Print  
    End Function  
End Class  

Thanks,
Alex

That is a bit too simple… ;-)
A printer dialog is not just for selecting a printer but has many more options.
In your sample, apart from the printer selection, none of the other options are taken into account…

Martin,
Yes, I have provided a simplified example. However, I see no problem to implement a more complex printing handler within the HandleCommand method.
For instance, you can subscribe to the report.PrintingSystem.StartPrint event, and initialize the e.PrintDocument.PrinterSettings manually (using the information extracted from the PrintDialog). If you are experiencing any problem, please let me know. I will be glad to help you.
Thanks,
Alex

My concern with this approach ist this: When the user clicks on the "Preferences" Button in the PrintDialog, the user can modify printer specific settings. These settings are not contained in the PageSettings class. The PageSettings class wraps the DEVMODE structure which contains a device-independent part and a device specific part. The PageSettings class only wraps the device-independent part, so that printer-specific settings would be lost, when using XtraPageSettings::Assign…
Any idea how to solve that?
Thanks,
Matthias

Hi Martin,
I am afraid we do not have an alternative (native) Print Dialog implementation to overcome this limitation right away. Please also take into account that in some situations it is impossible to track printer hardware issues (e.g. when the paper is jammed or a power failure occurs) during printing. So, it seems that there is no generic solution to determine whether a document has been physically printed.
Thanks,
Alex

Hi Alex,
thanks for your help. We are now using a different approach with a custom print dialog.
Still the question remains how to propagate the printer specific settings to the printed document.
In our custom print dialog we are calling the WinApi function DocumentProperties (in winspool.drv), thus we receive a complete DEVMODE structure with device-specific setting. How can we transfer these settings to the Report/PrintingSystem?
Thanks,
Matthias

Hi Martin,
Thank you for the response. Unfortunately, we do not provide any built-in methods to accomplish this task. So, you might need to extract the required information and update the PrintingSystem.PageSettings property manually. Hope this will be of some help.
Thanks,
Alex

I now using PrintSettings.SetHdevmode and GetHdevmode.
At what point in time (event oder overridden method on XtraReport) should I use this method to update PrintingSystem.PageSettings?

Martin,
I believe you can handle the XtraReport.AfterPrint event to access a newly created PrintingSystem instance. Alternatively, you can apply printer specific settings by handling the PrintingSystem.PrintProgress or the PrintingSystem.StartPrint event. Please apply this solution and inform us of your results.
Thanks,
Alex

It's not really a straightforward approach.
For now I am using this code: (I have a private PrinterSettings object)
    Protected Overrides Sub OnBeforePrint(ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintEventArgs)
        Me.Landscape = _PrinterSettings.DefaultPageSettings.Landscape
        Me.PrintingSystem.PageSettings.Assign(_PrinterSettings.DefaultPageSettings)
        Me.PaperKind = _PrinterSettings.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Kind
        If Me.PaperKind = System.Drawing.Printing.PaperKind.Custom Then
            'TODO: Convert Units?
            Me.PageSize = New Size(_PrinterSettings.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Width, PrinterSettings.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Height)
        End If
        MyBase.OnBeforePrint(e)
        PrintingSystem.RemoveCommandHandler(Me)
        PrintingSystem.AddCommandHandler(Me)
    End Sub
    Protected Overrides Sub OnAfterPrint(ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
        MyBase.OnAfterPrint(e)
        Me.PrintingSystem.PageSettings.Assign(_PrinterSettings.DefaultPageSettings)
        PrintingSystem.RemoveCommandHandler(Me)
        PrintingSystem.AddCommandHandler(Me)
    End Sub
    Protected Sub PrintingSystem_StartPrint(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As PrintDocumentEventArgs)
        e.PrintDocument.PrinterSettings = _PrinterSettings
    End Sub
Does that look right to you?
Thanks, M