printing to pdf

Question

The existing system has many reports . Using a free pdf printer like dopdf or cutepdf the user can open the report , choose the pdf printer , type in the filename and save the report as a pdf file.This seems a bit tedious

It would be nice to have the report directly saved as a pdf file just on click of a button. Unfortunately the reporting tool component doesnt have pdf export functionality. . Is there a way to programatically do this function using a third party component.

The printing should be silent , so that the user is not asked for a filename.Report 1 when clicked will make a file called c:\1.pdf for example. something like this ActivatePdfPrinter(c:\1.pdf); printreport; ClosePdfPrinter;

or any other method .

I use delphi but if you suggest any other tools that work in other programming languages then I can search in the right direction.

Answer 1

The free, open source PDFCreator can function as a virtual printer but it's also usable via COM. The default setup even includes COM examples.

You can check the COM samples in the SourceForge SVN repository right here: http://pdfcreator.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pdfcreator/trunk/COM/

Delphi and ActiveX get along superbly so you should not have much trouble.

Answer 2

Install Adobe Acrobat Professional and choose "Adobe PDF" as the printer.