ADOBE® FLEX® 3: PROGRAMMING ACTIONSCRIPT™ 3.0

ADOBE FLEX 3

Developer Guide

512

Timing print job statements

ActionScript 3.0 does not restrict a PrintJob object to a single frame (as did previous versions of ActionScript).

However, because the operating system displays print status information to the user once the user has clicked the OK

button in the Print dialog box, you should call

PrintJob.addPage() and PrintJob.send() as soon as possible to

send pages to the spooler. A delay reaching the frame containing the

PrintJob.send() call will delay the printing

process.

In ActionScript 3.0, there is a script time-out limit of 15 seconds. Therefore, the time between each major statement

in a print job sequence cannot exceed 15 seconds. In other words, the 15-second script time-out limit applies to the

following intervals:

• Between PrintJob.start() and the first PrintJob.addPage()

• Between PrintJob.addPage() and the next PrintJob.addPage()

• Between the last PrintJob.addPage() and PrintJob.send()

If any of these intervals spans more than 15 seconds, the next call to

PrintJob.start() on the PrintJob instance

returns

false, and the next PrintJob.addPage() on the PrintJob instance causes Flash Player or AIR to throw a

run-time exception.

Setting size, scale, and orientation

The section “Printing a page” on page 509 details the steps for a basic print job, where the output directly reflects the

printed equivalent of the screen size and position of the specified sprite. However, printers use different resolutions

for printing, and can have settings that adversely affect the appearance of the printed sprite.

Flash Player and AIR can read an operating system’s printing settings, but note that these properties are read-only:

although you can respond to their values, you can’t set them. So, for example, you can find out the printer’s page size

setting and adjust your content to fit the size. You can also determine a printer’s margin settings and page orientation.

To respond to the printer settings, you may need to specify a print area, adjust for the difference between a screen’s

resolution and a printer’s point measurements, or transform your content to meet the size or orientation settings of

the user’s printer.

Using rectangles for the print area

The PrintJob.addPage() method allows you to specify the region of a sprite that you want printed. The second

parameter,

printArea, is in the form of a Rectangle object. You have three options for providing a value for this

parameter:

• Create a Rectangle object with specific properties and then use that rectangle in the addPage() call, as in the

following example:

private var rect1:Rectangle = new Rectangle(0, 0, 400, 200);

myPrintJob.addPage(sheet, rect1);

• If you haven’t already specified a Rectangle object, you can do it within the call itself, as in the following example:

myPrintJob.addPage(sheet, new Rectangle(0, 0, 100, 100));

• If you plan to provide values for the third parameter in the addPage() call, but don’t want to specify a rectangle,

you can use

null for the second parameter, as in the following;

myPrintJob.addPage(sheet, null, options);