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MegaZine3 - tips, tricks and hints

Information, Ideas, News, Stories around MegaZine3

B001 Print Plugin: short overview of how to use that feature

Hans J Nücke - Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Since version 2.0.5 a print plugin is available.
Easiest and fastest way to add this is to just include it in the list of plugins in the <book> element like <book plugins="print, .. .." .. .. >

With this definition of the print plugin, a print button is included in the navigation bar. It shows a little print icon.
Clicking that button opens an overview window with a list of thumbnails, representing the up to 12 pages before and after the actually presented 2 pages of the book. A maximum of 25 pages will be shown. The 2 pages that had been presented on the monitor are already highlighted, what indicates they are selected. Each selected page will be printed.

You can add more pages to the selecetion in clicking on the thumbnail of that page and by that highlighting it. Clicking on a selected, highlighted page again toggels the status and unselects the page.

At the bottom of the window there is an input field where page ranges of pages to be printed can be entered. You either can list single pages separated by a colon ";" or you define a page range like 3-9 which will print all pages between and including pages 3 and 9. Or you combine both methods like
1-5; 10; 14-16; 22; 25

If you leave the print selection window by clicking the upper right "X" button, all pages will be deselected and you'll be back with your book.

If you click the box with the check mark sign at the bottom right, the standard print window opens up and you can select a printer and then start to print the selected pages.

Be careful and do not select too many pages. With Flash the number of pages is restricted by the size of the available memory! If the number of selected pages is too high (the maximum can be set by a parameter in the MZ3 file), the browser might crash.
Unfortunately there is no way to get any information from Flash about the memeroy status, so we cannot avoid that situation.

Below an example of a book element declaration, showing also the use of the print parameter.
Adding print="high/resolution/path/to/hires-image.swf" to the page element, will tell the print plugin to render the defined file instead of the actual rendered page. Which results in an optimal print  out.


<chapter>
<!-- without print parameter -->
<page buffer="true"><img width="826" height="1169" src="../wald/../wald/pages/page1.swf" hires="../wald/../wald/pages/page1.swf" gallery="../wald/pages"/></page>
...
...
<!-- with print parameter set -->
<page buffer="true" print="../wald/pages/page11.swf" ><img width="826" height="1169" src="../wald/pages/page11.swf" hires="../wald/pages/page11.swf" gallery="../wald/pages"/></page>
..
..


BTW: If you use liquid scaling, you in most cases can ommitt the parameter hires, which will be interpreted by the gallery  plugin. Or you simply do not includ the "gallery" in the list of plugins.
With the gallery plugin active, the defined image under hires= will be presented in full screen mode if the spy glass is clicked or if you click within a page while the mouse shows a spy glass.