PrintPanel and CVI 6.0

[stephan]

Hello
I have a CVI aplikation (developed with CVI 5.5). Sometimes the customer has problems with the printing of an panel (using PrintPanel).
I used "Bitmap Printing" mode , but the problems do not went away completly. There are often some lines from a graph control missing.
The customer uses NT 4, SP 5, HP InkJet 690 Printer with latest printer driver from HP.

I know have updated my deleloper system to CVI 6.0 and notice, that the PrintPanel function know does not work correctly on my system, when I use "bitmap printing". Without the "bitmap" mode switched on, the print out is korrect on MY system.
Know I wonder, wether the printing problems went away, when I upgrade my customer also to CVI 6.0.
Was the PrintPanel routine changed with this
release? Are teher any known isues with the PrintPanel routine?

Thanks

[Shannon R]

Stephan,

Generally, when you have printing issues with specific printers when using the CVI printing functions such as PrintPanel, it is almost always caused by the specific driver implementation they are using. I know that this may be hard to believe that so many different printer drivers are the cause and not CVI, but the following information explains why.


CVI creates standard Windows GDI instructions for rending text and images on display devices and does not directly interact with the driver, it is up to the driver to be fully compatible with the Windows GDI subsystem standard and properly render all of the instructions. The printing functionality of CVI has remained unchanged for quite some time and has stuck with this method of using GDI only to maintain the highest level of compatibility with all output devices, but sadly many of the newer driver implementations have forgone GDI compatiblity to optimize their drivers to work best with certain applications. Now, if you think about it, since an older driver often can correctly output the graphics and text without incident (depending on when the printer was originally manufactured there may not be an older driver), it must be a change in the new driver that is causing this to happen, and the printer itself nor CVI is the problem.


To remedy the situation, you could try using an earlier version of the printer driver that may still comply with the GDI compatibility or using a different printer. The only other thing I can really suggest is using the SetPrintAttribute function to change some of the graphics printing attributes (changing text printing attributes is done in the same fashion), such as enabling bitmap printing and the print area size, as suggested in the following Knowledge Base written by a fellow Applications Engineer:


Link -> http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/7112309d1e886e5e862569ae006f77c0?OpenDocument


An explanation of GDI printing is found at the link below:


Link -> http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/0b33d74eefd61cb9862565fa00740196?OpenDocument


I hope this information helps and I wish you luck!


Regards,
Shannnon Rariden
Applications Engineer
National Instruments"