Silverlight printing

Question

What are my options for printing in Silverlight 3? Assume I have this awesome Silverlight application/control that creates a graphical display of some data. Now the user wants to print it.

I have considered a few options but I have yet to test any of these. Before I do that I would like to get some feedback on how it can be done.

1. Use the browser printing capabilites. In my experience this is does not provide a useful print, but perhaps with some interaction between the Silverlight host and the browser it can be done?

2. Use WriteableBitmap. The image can either be written locally, but this requires interaction from the user, or sent to the server where a suitable file (e.g. PDF file) can be generated and then sent back to the browser. Unfortunately you now get the overhead of sending the image twice across the network and increased complexity on the server side.

3. Send XAML back to the server that is then rendered in a WPF application running on the server. The result is the sent back to the client. I'm not sure if this is possible at all however, but if it is the network overhead is less than in option 2. Unfortunately, the complexity on the server side is even higher.

4. Wait for Silverlight 4?

One thing I have considered is that my awesome control probably will have a ScrollViewer at the highest level, but the user will want to print the entire content of the control, not just whatever is visible inside the bounds of the ScrollViewer. How can I handle this added complexity?

Answer 1

In all seriousness, I think your best option is to wait until Silverlight 4 if your client can wait that long. I've seen a good bit of buzz about SL 4 supporting printing on twitter, though it's not official. I'd wait until PDC in a few weeks and see if any Silverlight bits trickle out to support printing.