It is possible to provide the Designer with data for preview, so that the user sees the report as it will be when printed. Furthermore, there is the possibility of printing or exporting directly from the Designer.
For C++ there is already a fully functional sample source code available. You will find it in the directory '"Samples > Visual C++ > Designer Preview and Drilldown ''.
Your development environment must comply with the following conditions, so that this feature can be supported:
•It can respond to callbacks (refer to chapter Callbacks and Notifications)
•It can start a thread with a print procedure and supports synchronization elements such as Mutex, Critical Section or similar.
The work to be undertaken by your code includes execution of your usual real data print/ export routine, however – at least for the preview – in a separate thread. For this purpose, information about the pending task (start, abort, end and query status) is supplied via a callback. A pointer to a scLlDesignerPrintJob structure will be passed, specifing all neccessary information for the respective task. There are only a few changes necessary compared to a regular print/export.