Reporting with the CF?

[Guest]

Hi all

Anyone knows if there is any kind of report generator for the .Net CF? My app will have to print a lot of invoices and, for what I've been reading, there is no support for printing with the .NET CF... Any sort of Crystal Reports for the Pocket PC??

Regards in advanc

MIGUEL

 

[Ginny Caughey [MVP]]

Miguel,

There are several approaches to printing in .NetCF. There is a 3rd party
product called PrinterCE that supports a number of different printers. If
you will only be using one printer, however, and it is attached to your
device's serial port, you can just use a serial class (www.opennetcf.org) to
write strings to the printer. (Most portable printers have a printer control
langauge that allows you to select font, orientation, etc., by using escape
sequences in the data stream.) The logic for printing invoices is generally
pretty simple, so a report writer might be overkill.
--
Ginny Caughey
..Net Compact Framework MVP

Hi all,

Anyone knows if there is any kind of report generator for the .Net CF? My

app will have to print a lot of invoices and, for what I've been reading,
there is no support for printing with the .NET CF... Any sort of Crystal
Reports for the Pocket PC???

 

[chris-s]

Checkout Crystal 10, just released and includes the following feature, not
sure exactly what it is tho!

Crystal Reports for mobile devices. Deliver new or existing report
components to wireless devices, including WML phones and RIM Blackberry and
Compaq iPAQ devices. Reports don't have to be recreated specifically for use
within wireless and portal environments.


http://www.businessobjects.com/products/reporting/crystalreports/net/upgrade
..asp


Chris

Hi all,

Anyone knows if there is any kind of report generator for the .Net CF? My

app will have to print a lot of invoices and, for what I've been reading,
there is no support for printing with the .NET CF... Any sort of Crystal
Reports for the Pocket PC???

 

[Guest]

Hi Ginny, thanks for the answer

Your solution looks good to me, if we decide to use preprinted paper
Can you give me any sort of sample on how to send escape characters to the printer? I used that in clipper but don't know how to use it from VB ou c#

Regard

MIGUE

----- Ginny Caughey [MVP] wrote: ----

Miguel

There are several approaches to printing in .NetCF. There is a 3rd part
product called PrinterCE that supports a number of different printers. I
you will only be using one printer, however, and it is attached to you
device's serial port, you can just use a serial class (www.opennetcf.org) t
write strings to the printer. (Most portable printers have a printer contro
langauge that allows you to select font, orientation, etc., by using escap
sequences in the data stream.) The logic for printing invoices is generall
pretty simple, so a report writer might be overkill
--
Ginny Caughe
..Net Compact Framework MV

Hi all

app will have to print a lot of invoices and, for what I've been reading
there is no support for printing with the .NET CF... Any sort of Crysta
Reports for the Pocket PC??

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

The Escape character itself is just Chr(27) in VB.NET or "\x1b" in C#. You
need to make sure you're sending ASCII, not Unicode, to the printer, but it
should just be a matter of following the printer manual from there.

Paul T.

Hi Ginny, thanks for the answer,

Your solution looks good to me, if we decide to use preprinted paper!
Can you give me any sort of sample on how to send escape characters to the

printer? I used that in clipper but don't know how to use it from VB ou c#!

Regards

MIGUEL

----- Ginny Caughey [MVP] wrote: -----

Miguel,

There are several approaches to printing in .NetCF. There is a 3rd party
product called PrinterCE that supports a number of different printers. If
you will only be using one printer, however, and it is attached to your
device's serial port, you can just use a serial class

(www.opennetcf.org) to

 

[Ginny Caughey [MVP]]

Miguel,

As Paul said. It's just like in Clipper. Here's what the string looks like
to print a barcode with the Comtec-3 printer (but other printers will look
different):

"BARCODE 128 1 1 50 130 100 "+stringToPrint+"\r\n"

Then you send this to get it to actually print the stuff you've formatted
with the format commands.
"PRINT\r\n"

Once you decide on a printer, check that printer's docs for details.
--
Ginny Caughey
..Net Compact Framework MVP

Hi Ginny, thanks for the answer,

Your solution looks good to me, if we decide to use preprinted paper!
Can you give me any sort of sample on how to send escape characters to the

printer? I used that in clipper but don't know how to use it from VB ou c#!

Regards

MIGUEL

----- Ginny Caughey [MVP] wrote: -----

Miguel,

There are several approaches to printing in .NetCF. There is a 3rd party
product called PrinterCE that supports a number of different printers. If
you will only be using one printer, however, and it is attached to your
device's serial port, you can just use a serial class

(www.opennetcf.org) to

 

[Alex Feinman [MVP]]

I think this is using Mobile ASP.NET

Checkout Crystal 10, just released and includes the following feature, not
sure exactly what it is tho!

Crystal Reports for mobile devices. Deliver new or existing report
components to wireless devices, including WML phones and RIM Blackberry and
Compaq iPAQ devices. Reports don't have to be recreated specifically for use
within wireless and portal environments.


http://www.businessobjects.com/products/reporting/crystalreports/net/upgrade
.asp


Chris


My
app will have to print a lot of invoices and, for what I've been reading,
there is no support for printing with the .NET CF... Any sort of Crystal
Reports for the Pocket PC???