Printing Report Forms (Magic xpa 3.x)
Magic xpa supports printing to both graphical printers (using a Windows printer driver) and text-based printers (using declarations of print attributes).
Printing to graphical printers is done by defining an I/O device with a Media type of Graphic Printer and defining Output forms with an Interface Type of GUI Output.
You can use fonts and colors in the graphical output. Note that if you print to a graphical printer using a font other than a TrueType font, and the font is not available to the printer, there may be situations where some characters will be altered in the printed output.
Printing to text-based printers is done by defining an I/O device with a Media type of Printer and defining Output forms with an Interface Type of Text Based.
The text-based printers must be defined in the Printer repository.
For each text-based printer defined in the Printer repository, Magic xpa must know which printer control codes are employed for each typeface/font combination, and which colors will represent which print styles. This information is contained in two printer support files, the Print Attributes file and the Printer Commands file.
Magic xpa’s printer attribute support lets you control the appearance of printed output. Printer attribute support is relevant for text-based I/O only. Your output can include whichever fonts (such as Times New Roman and Helvetica) and typefaces (for example, bold and italic) that your printer supports.
Print Attribute Repository
