How would you print B&W from a colored form?

Panorama X
1

I’m working on an interactive form that has a colored background and colored objects. But at some point, I might like to print out that form and work with it manually with pencil/pen.

If I put the form in tiles, then even if I can set the print option to Black and White, usually the printer does it’s own interpretation and renders in shades of gray.

But I’d just want black and white. So I considered duplicating the form but without the colored background. That would be good enough; any colored controls wouldn’t matter.

I’m guessing I could push a button that would move to the “printable form” (white background), print, and go back to the interactive form.

Is there a cleaner way? Like a method that would keep the interactive form visible but print it with no background color - without the user seeing any form flip?

As a guess, what about a Hide or NoShow (which one is preferred?), then change the form background to white (BluePrint), print it, change it back to the original color and Show. In that case I’m not moving off the original form.

How do you graphic design skillaterians do it?

2

That is a choice that I can make in the print dialog when I print something. That would be a CUPS thing, part of the system.

I wish I knew how to set CUPS options programmatically. There are a lot of things that Panorama could do for printing if I could do that.

3

Have you looked at the printusingform statement?

4

Gary, printusingform for the win!

In the Help description, it shows

printusingform "My Report"
 print dialog

I’ll investigate what I can do to eliminate the need for “dialog”. The page will be printed in Landscape orientation, single sheet, no color.

5

You might also want to investigate the PrintToPDF statement. Despite its name, it can be used to print using a specified printer, instead of saving a PDF.

6

Thank you all. This is working out quite well. There’s was little challenge because my screen resolution is not WYSIWYG, but a few printing tests indicated what I needed to do.

It is working great. I can play on the interactive screen - I’m still working on translating my thought/decision making process into code actions - and if I want to shift over to finishing the “work” with pencil and paper, one button push prints out the worksheet (while leaving me on the interactive page) at its current state of completion. So cool :slightly_smiling_face: