Printing Gantt and Schedule charts

Programmer's documentation > Developing with the JViews Gantt SDK > Printing > Printing Gantt and Schedule charts

Describes the main classes in the printing API and explains how to use them.

Overview

Explains the relation between the classes in the JViews Gantt API.

Introduction

Describes the main classes in the JViews Gantt printing framework and explains the relationship between the classes.

The GanttPrintExample demo

Explains how to run and use this sample application.

Printing Framework API

Describes the properties of the main classes in the Resource Data chart printing framework.

How it works

Explains how to initiate and process a printing task.

Overview

The IlvGanttChart and IlvScheduleChart classes are UI components designed to display your projects on screen. To distribute and to exchange the projects, you may need to print the projects on paper. You may also need to print not only the visible part of the projects but also the part that is not visible.

JViews Gantt provides APIs that allow you to print the Gantt or Schedule charts in a document (single or multiple pages) without scrolling the UI. These APIs collectively are referred to as the JViews Gantt printing framework.

NOTE Before reading this section you should familiarize yourself with sections The generic printing framework and Printing framework for manager content of Advanced Features of Rogue Wave® JViews Framework.

Introduction

The JViews Gantt printing framework extends the basic Rogue Wave®JViews Framework printing framework to add support to IlvGanttChart and IlvScheduleChart objects. The generic classes of the ilog.views.util.print package have been subclassed to handle specific Gantt properties.

These classes are:

IlvGanttPrintingController: A Gantt printing controller controls the printing process.

IlvGanttPrintableDocument: A Gantt printable document defines the printing configuration and contains the Gantt data you want to print in a set of pages.

IlvPrintableGanttSheet: A Gantt sheet printable object is used to print a portion of an IlvGanttSheet object.

IlvPrintableTimeScale: A time scale printable object is used to print a portion of an IlvTimeScale.

For information on how to use these classes, see Printing Framework API.

The following figure shows the associations between classes for printing a Gantt chart.

The GanttPrintExample demo

The GanttPrintExample demo is a simple example for printing a Gantt chart.

To run the demo:

1. Open the file:

<installdir>/jviews-gantt/samples/print

2. Follow the instructions to run the example given in the print demo.

The source code of this example can be found in:

<installdir>/jviews-gantt/samples/print/src/print/GanttPrintExample.java

To use Gantt printing:

1. Create an instance of an IlvGanttPrintingController:

IlvGanttChart gantt = ...;

IlvGanttPrintingController printController =

new IlvGanttPrintingController(gantt);

2. Invoke on that instance the action you want to see performed, such as print, setupDialog, or printPreview as shown here:

printController.printPreview((java.awt.Frame)gantt.getTopLevelAncestor());

The following figure shows the result of invoking the printPreview method:

Printing Framework API

The following classes are involved in the JViews Gantt printing framework:

IlvGanttPrintableDocument

IlvGanttPrintingController

IlvPrintableGanttSheet

IlvPrintableTimeScale

IlvGanttPrintableDocument

The Gantt printable document stores the printed document structure and defines a set of parameters to customize the printing (the printed data window, which part of the Gantt is printed, how the Gantt fits on the page, and so on). The printable document is responsible for creating and populating the pages.

The following table shows the different properties you can customize for printing.

Property	Description
Divider position	Defines the position on the page that separates the table and the Gantt sheet (the value must be between 0 and 1).
Number of pages per band	The JViews Gantt printing framework provides support for multipage printing through the “pages per band” property. This represents the number of horizontal pages you want printed between the start and the end date.
Repeat table	Indicates whether the table should be printed repeatedly on every page.
Start date	The start date of the first printed page. This defines the beginning of the printed data.
End date	The end date for the last printed page in a band. This defines the end of the printed data.
Number of columns of the table	Indicates the number of table columns to be printed.

NOTE 	All these properties are also accessible from the JViews Gantt Print Setup dialog box, which you can invoke by calling the method setupDialog on the IlvGanttPrintingController instance.

The following table summarizes the IlvGanttPrintableDocument properties.

Property	Methods	Default value when automatically created	Field in JViews Gantt Designer
Divider position	getDividerPosition setDividerPosition	0.5	Table, Table size
End date of the last page in a band	getEnd setEnd	The chart visible time + the chart visible duration	Print Range, Dates, To
Number of pages per band	getPagesPerBand setPagesPerBand	2	Print Range, Fit to
Whether the table is printed repeatedly on every page	getRepeatTable setRepeatTable	False	Table, Print table on all pages
Start date of the first page	getDividerPosition setStart	The chart visible time	Print Range, Dates, From
Number of columns of the table	getTableColumnCount setTableColumnCount	The chart table column count	Table, Print <n> table column(s)

The following figure shows the default print settings.

With these settings, you get two pages in the Print Preview window. You can see that the table, with its six columns, is only displayed on the first page occupying 50% of the page size.

The following figure shows the second page of the Print Preview dialog.

IlvGanttPrintingController

The printing controller controls the printing process. It initiates the printer job, handles the Setup and Preview dialog boxes, and configures the document accordingly.

The configuration of the document can be done:

Automatically, by using the following constructor:

public IlvGanttPrintingController(IlvHierarchyChart chart)

In this case, a printable document is created with the pages oriented in landscape, two pages per band, and all the columns of the Gantt table printed on the first page only (occupying half of the page size). See Examples.

Through code, by creating a Gantt printable document and setting the parameters as described in section IlvGanttPrintableDocument.

IlvPrintableGanttSheet

An instance of the class IlvPrintableGanttSheet represents the concrete Gantt sheet object that can be printed. It extends the IlvPrintableComponent class, which itself is a subclass of IlvPrintableObject. IlvPrintableGanttSheet lets you print the IlvGanttSheet within a region of the printable area of an IlvPage.

The way the Gantt fills the region is determined by the different document properties. Consequently, you do not need to use the IlvPrintableGanttSheet class directly if you want to print using the parameters provided by the Setup dialog box. You will need this class only if you want to control your IlvPrintableDocument object by creating pages and adding your own IlvPrintableObject instances.

For information on IlvPrintable, IlvPrintableDocument, and IlvPrintableObject, see The generic printing framework in Advanced Features of Rogue Wave® JViews Framework.

IlvPrintableTimeScale

An instance of the class IlvPrintableTimeScale represents the concrete time scale object that can be printed. It also extends IlvPrintableComponent, which, as you saw in IlvPrintableGanttSheet, is a subclass of IlvPrintableObject. IlvPrintableTimeScale lets you print a portion of the IlvTimeScale object within an IlvPage.

The way the Gantt fills the region is determined by the different document properties. Consequently you do not need to use the IlvPrintableTimeScale class directly if you want to print using the parameters provided by the Setup dialog box. You will need this class only if you want to control your IlvPrintableDocument by creating pages and adding your own IlvPrintableObject instances.

For information on IlvPrintableDocument, IlvPrintableComponent, and IlvPrintableObject, see The generic printing framework in Advanced Features of Rogue Wave JViews Framework.

How it works

A printing task is initiated and processed by an IlvGanttPrintingController instance:

by code, via the method print, or

from a GUI request using the Setup or Preview dialog, via the methods:

IlvPrintingController.printPreview(Window)

and

IlvPrintingController.setupDialog(Window, boolean, boolean)

When a printing task is initiated, the document associated with the printing controller is prepared for printing: pages are initialized with the printable objects and added to the document.

NOTE See section IlvGanttPrintingController for a description of how a document is associated with the IlvGanttPrintingController.

This section covers:

Handling pages

Populating a page

Handling pages

Pages of a Gantt document are instances of the IlvPage class. They handle a collection of printable objects, instances of IlvPrintableObject.

Populating a page

Pages created by an IlvGanttPrintableDocument are populated in the createPages method. You may override the createPages method if you want to add additional printable objects to the page.

The createPages implementation uses the following printable objects:

ilog.views.util.print. IlvPrintableTableHeader, if there are columns to print

ilog.views.util.print. IlvPrintableTable, if there are columns to print

ilog.views.gantt.print. IlvPrintableTimeScale

ilog.views.gantt.print. IlvPrintableGanttSheet

ilog.views.util.print. IlvPrintableRectangle

The following figure shows the associations between classes for populating a page.