Greetings all,

We're pleased to announce that the new robust printing system for Map Suite has finally arrived! Beginning with Map Suite version 5.0.102.0 just released today, you can start adding interactive previewing, page layout and printing capabilities to your Map Suite applications. We've also released a new code sample to show you how to put it all together.

To get access to the new printing functionality in Map Suite, you'll need to download the latest daily build for your chosen product(s). You can get the latest daily build from your Customer Portal account -- they're available for any Map Suite products that you've purchased, as well as our full array of evaluations.

How Printing Works

The accompanying code sample will introduce you to the new printing system. Within, we'll show you how to add robust printing support to your Map Suite applications for the desktop, WPF, web or services environments. You'll be able to build a Print Preview interface that lets your users interactively arrange items (such as a map, scale line, labels, data grid or image) on a virtual page before printing the result to a printer, exporting to a PDF or to a bitmap image. Maps are printed using vector graphics so you can be sure the output will look great on anything from a PDF to a large plotter. The printing system also includes low-level report building classes that make it easy to generate reports in the web or services environment.

The C# code sample, designed for Visual Studio 2010, is available in both WPF and Windows Forms and can be downloaded here:

http://wiki.thinkgeo.com/wiki/Map_S...ng_Samples

Special Note for Users of Map Suite Web, Silverlight and Services Editions

The Print Preview interface pictured above, which allows users to interactively arrange drag-and-drop page layouts, hinges on the new PrinterInteractiveOverlay class that is exclusive to Map Suite Desktop and WPF Desktop Editions. This means that Web, Silverlight and Services Editions do not currently include this functionality. However, the ability to programmatically prepare page layouts and send them to a printer is included in the core classes that are shared across all products.

Users of Map Suite Web, Silverlight or Services Editions will therefore be able to design (in code) their own custom PageLayers using whatever layout they choose and then export those layouts to a printer. The only functionality missing from these editions of Map Suite is the drag-and-drop page layout user interface pictured above.

For more details on this, please take a look at the instructional video we've posted below.

Watch the Video

We've prepared the following instructional video to help explain the new printing support. Presented by Map Suite Chief Architect David Rehagen, it will walk you through the Print Preview code sample, show you what it can accomplish and how easy it is to implement.

Watch the walkthrough video for Map Suite's Print Preview code sample

As a reminder, you'll need to download the latest daily development build for your Map Suite .NET control before you can use printing support. If you need help with daily builds, please review our wiki article on the subject.

Thanks for choosing Map Suite,
The ThinkGeo Team