PrinterCE
SDK
General
Info
Download
Purchase & Pricing
Developer Info
eVC MFC
eVC C/C++
eVB
Special Features
AsciiCE
PrintDC
BarcodeCE
Documentation
PrinterCE SDK
AsciiCE
PrintDC
BarcodeCE
Special Topics
Supported
Printers
Bluetooth Printing
Network Printing
DLL Load Error
.Net CF C# or VB.Net:
PrinterCE.NetCF
SDK
-----------------------------
Software Developers
PrinterCE SDK
PrinterCE.NetCF
SDK
PocketHTMLprint SDK
Printing Utilities
PrintPocketCE
PIEprint
PocketPixPrint
PocketShot
PocketClipPrint
Arcade Games
SockOut
MazeCraze
PrinterCE
- MFC Installation and Usage
Download PrCEUser.h -
PrinterCE Defines file
- Download & install PrinterCE on your device & desktop PC (see instructions on Download page)
- On your desktop PC, click Start menu -> Run -> type "regsvr32 \path\prenginece.dll" where "path" is the path to where you saved the desktop version of PrEngineCE.dll. Click OK and you should see a "LoadLIbrary succeeded" message box.
- Create your MFC Project - Be sure to enable ActiveX controls in the MFC wizard.
- Select the Project -> Add to Project -> Components and Controls
- The Components and Controls Gallery will pop up (it may take some time) - select Registered ActiveX Controls.
- Find and select the PrinterCE, BarcodeCE and/or AsciiCE2 class entry and click OK to insert the desired component(s). This will insert two “wrapper class” files for each component (printerce.h/printerce.cpp, barcodece.h/barcodece.cpp and asciice2.h/asciice2.cpp) which provides MFC with all of the information needed to support the inserted components. [NOTE: If you do not see the PrinterCE related controls, click on "Add Control" button. Then browse over to where you saved the desktop version of PrEngineCE.dll, select and click OK. You should now see the controls and can complete this step].
- Click OK to Confirm Classes and Close the Controls Gallery.
- IMPORTANT
NOTE FOR AsciiCE2 USERS: There is a known bug in MFC that
causes incorrect "wrapper classes" to be generated for
methods that pass BYTE or BYTE* parameters (see MSDN
Q241862). Two AsciiCE2 methods ("Read" and
"Write") pass blocks of data through BYTE arrays. If your
application uses the AsciiCE2 "Read" or "Write"
methods, click on the following links to download corrected
"asciice2.h" and "asciice2.cpp" files. Then copy
these into your MFC app's directory, overwriting the files that MFC
created for you.
[Download asciice.h] [Download asciice.cpp] - Select View menu -> Resource Symbols
- On the Resource Symbols dialog, click New and type in IDC_PRINTERCE for the new resource name. Click OK and Close the dialog box.
- Now you need to declare the class and create it. You need to decide where to do this, but it may look something like the following:
#include “printerce.h”
// This defines the CPrinterCE class
CPrinterCE PrinterCE1;
// Set up an instance of the class
void SomeFunction()
{
static BOOL OneTimeFlag=FALSE;
if (!OneTimeFlag) {
//Only
create one instance of PrinterCE!!
OneTimeFlag=TRUE;
RECT
rc;
//Since PrinterCE is not visible, value of RECT is not important
PrinterCE1.Create(NULL,0,rc,this,IDC_PRINTERCE);
}
//PrinterCE1 should now be up and running, so do whatever you
want…
// For this
example, we’ll do the Hello World…
PrinterCE1.SelectPrinter();
PrinterCE1.DrawText(_T(“Hello World”),0,0,NULL);
PrinterCE1.EndDoc();
}
Compile your program, download it to your WinCE device (double-check that you have installed PrinterCE onto your device) and run it. You should see the printer dialog box, and then get a printed page that says “Hello World”
Using MFC
There are some issues that MFC/CE
developers must deal with that are unfortunate results of ActiveX controls
being designed to work with both eVB and MFC. The eVB environment
automatically handles these situations… maybe someday MFC will also.
Until then, MFC developers must do the “handling”.
Function Calls
The PrinterCE documentation follows
the eVB scheme that “subroutines” (functions that do NOT return a
value) do not place parameters within parentheses, while “functions”
(which DO return a value) do use parens. Of course, MFC always uses parens.
So when the documentation defines the DrawCircle method as: “object.DrawCircle
x, y, radius, [color], [ aspect]” the
MFC programmer must convert this to :
PrCE.DrawCircle(x,y,radius,color,aspect);
PrinterCE Properties
The PrinterCE properties must have
“Get” or “Put” pre-appended to the property name for MFC. For
example, the FontBold property is specified in the documentation as: object.FontBold
[= Boolean]. An eVB program can set this property by
PrinterCE.FontBold=True. An MFC program must call
PrinterCE.SetFontBold(VARIANT_TRUE); Similarly, to get the current X
coordinate from PrinterCE, MFC calls xCoord=PrinterCE.GetTextX();
VARIANT BOOL
Every C++ developer knows that the
Boolean value FALSE is 0 and TRUE is 1. But in eVB, TRUE is –1
(although FALSE is still 0). MFC defines the type VT_BOOL for this
situation with the values VARIANT_TRUE and VARIANT_FALSE. All PrinterCE
functions that expect a Boolean value look for either VARIANT_TRUE or
VARIANT_FALSE. Note that PrinterCE functions are designed to work fine
with the standard TRUE/FALSE as well as VARIANT_TRUE/VARIANT_FALSE, but
any PrinterCE functions that return Boolean values will return the VARIANT
versions.
VARIANT Data Types
Certain PrinterCE functions use
“optional” parameters. For example, the DrawText method is defined as:
“object.DrawText
string, [x], [y], [count]” where x, y and
count are “optional”. In C++, these sort of optional parameters are
handled by overloading functions so that you might have several variants
of DrawText() to deal with all possible calls. eVB cannot deal with
overloaded functions, so any “optional” parameters must be passed as
VARIANT data types. (Please check the online documentation for more
information on VARIANTs and MFC’s VARIANT class wrapper CComVariant).
Basically,
a VARIANT can represent a wide variety of data types including VT_EMPTY.
When an eVB program calls a PrinterCE function without one or more of the
optional parameters, it eVB automatically passes an “empty” VARIANT
for each “omitted” parameter. An MFC program can instead pass NULL (0)
for an empty parameter and PrinterCE will work fine. But when an MFC
program actually wants to pass a value for one of these optional params, a
VARIANT value must be passed. The MFC CComVariant class eases much of the
pain of using variants. Note that you need to #include <atlbase.h>
in order to use both VARIANT and CComVariant data types in your MFC
program.
PrCEUser.h - MFC & VC++ Constants defined
Copy and include this file
(PrCEUser.h)
to get all of the PrinterCE user constants predefined.
Wrapping up – an
MFC Example:
An
example is worth its weight in gold, so below is the source code for an
MFC function that prints out some text and an image. Note that VARIANTs
are used rather than CComVariants to demonstrate how to use them. Click
here to see a scan of the output of this example. Follow the steps
above to create the initial MFC program and add PrinterCE to it..
//atlbase.h
allows use of both VARIANT and the CComVariant class
#include <atlbase.h>
#include "printerce.h" //Define CPrinterCE class
CPrinterCE
m_PrinterCE; //Instance of PrinterCE
#include "PrCEUser.h" //PrinterCE defs file that defines
all user constants
void CPrEngineTestDlg::OnTestprint()
{
RECT rc; // dummy used to create PrinterCE instance
m_PrinterCE.Create(NULL,0,rc,this,IDC_PRINTERCE);
//Check out the CComVariant class because it does a lot of
// the grunt work
for you. I will just use straight VARIANTS here.
VARIANT cv,cvx,cvy,cvsiz;
VariantInit(&cv);
//You have to init variants before you use them
VariantInit(&cvx);
VariantInit(&cvy);
VariantInit(&cvsiz);
m_PrinterCE.SelectPrinter();
//Lets demo positioning and drawing text
// Assigning a value to a variant requires 2 steps:
// define the "type" and the
"value"
cvx.vt=VT_I4;
//Define a couple of VARIANT longs and assign them
cvx.lVal=1440;
// In TWIPS - 1440 TWIPS per inch
cvy.vt=VT_I4;
cvy.lVal=2880;
m_PrinterCE.SetFontSize(16);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("16 pt font, no bold or
italic"),&cvx,&cvy,NULL);
m_PrinterCE.SetFontBold(VARIANT_TRUE); //Use VARIANT_TRUE rather than TRUE
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold"),NULL,NULL,NULL);
m_PrinterCE.SetFontItalic(VARIANT_TRUE);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold &
Italic"),NULL,NULL,NULL);
//Change ScaleMode to inches and use FLOAT values for x,y
m_PrinterCE.SetScaleMode(vbInches);
cvx.vt=cvy.vt=VT_R4;
//Float type
cvx.fltVal=0.75;
cvy.fltVal=6.25;
//Lets also set BOLD value to max of 1000
m_PrinterCE.SetFontName(_T("Courier New"));
m_PrinterCE.SetFontBoldVal(1000);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold & Italic :
1000"),&cvx,&cvy,0);
m_PrinterCE.SetFontBoldVal(700);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold & Italic :
700"),NULL,NULL,0);
m_PrinterCE.SetFontBoldVal(500);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold & Italic :
500"),NULL,NULL,0);
m_PrinterCE.SetFontBoldVal(300);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold & Italic :
300"),NULL,NULL,0);
m_PrinterCE.SetFontBoldVal(100);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold & Italic :
100"),NULL,NULL,0);
m_PrinterCE.SetFontBold(VARIANT_TRUE);
m_PrinterCE.DrawText(_T("Bold & Italic : Straight
bold"),NULL,NULL,0);
//Finally, lets draw a picture
cv.vt=VT_BOOL;
//Type
is BOOL
cv.boolVal=VARIANT_TRUE;
//value is True (VARIANT_TRUE)
//Center on the page
float fltx,flty;
fltx=m_PrinterCE.GetPrPgWidth() / 2.0;
flty=m_PrinterCE.GetPrPgHeight() / 2.0;
m_PrinterCE.SetJustifyHoriz(vbCenter);
//Center horizontally
m_PrinterCE.SetJustifyVert(vbCenter);
//Center vertically
//The "keepaspect" optional value must be a variant
bool
cvsiz.vt=VT_R4;
cvsiz.fltVal=2.0;
//Fit picture in 2" box
m_PrinterCE.DrawPicture(_T("\\Images\\Owl.bmp"),fltx,flty,&cvsiz,&cvsiz,&cv);
m_PrinterCE.EndDoc();
VariantClear(&cv);
VariantClear(&cvx);
VariantClear(&cvy);
VariantClear(&cvsiz);
}