ios - Print a UIView, but NOT by rendering as a bitmap image

Question

Say you have a simple UIView with only text (ie, UILabel) and maybe some black lines.

Here's exactly how you can print that UIView...

render it as a UIImage, and print that...

- (IBAction)printB:(id)sender
    {
    // we want to print a normal view ... some UILabels, maybe a black line

    // in this technique, depressingly we CREATE AN IMAGE of the view...

    // step 1. make a UIImage, of the whole view.

    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(self.printMe.bounds.size, NO, 0.0);

    // [self.printMe.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
    // UIImage *asAnImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
    // .... or, more futuristically.....
    [self.printMe drawViewHierarchyInRect:self.printMe.bounds
        afterScreenUpdates:NO];
    UIImage *snapshotImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();

    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

    // step 2. choose grayscale, etc

    UIPrintInfo *info = [UIPrintInfo printInfo];
    info.orientation = UIPrintInfoOrientationPortrait;
    info.outputType = UIPrintInfoOutputGrayscale;

    // step 3, print that UIImage

    UIPrintInteractionController *pic =
       [UIPrintInteractionController sharedPrintController];
    pic.delegate = self;
    //pic.printingItem = asAnImage;
    pic.printingItem = snapshotImage;
    pic.printInfo = info;

    UIPrintInteractionCompletionHandler completionHandler =
    ^(UIPrintInteractionController *pic, BOOL completed, NSError *error)
        {
        if (error)
            NSLog(@"failed... %@ %ld", error.domain, (long)error.code);
        if (completed)
            NSLog(@"completed yes");
        else
            NSLog(@"completed no");
        };     

    [pic presentAnimated:YES completionHandler:completionHandler];
    }

But this gives you crap results. It's a ridiculous way to print typography. It should be being sent as postscript, or something.

on iPad screen...

when printed ..

Note that, of course, if you use a retina ipad it's a bit better, but that's not the point. it's ridiculous to print text information, black lines, as an image.

Now, you'd think you could print a UIView something like this ...

pic.printFormatter = [someUIView viewPrintFormatter];

but I can't get that to work no matter what I try.

Does anyone have anything on this? Thanks!

PS - note that in iOS, we've recently changed from using renderInContext to using the snapshot call. It makes absolutely no difference to the issue here, cheers.

Answer 1

As Apple Doc states, viewPrintFormatter attribute of UIView is defined in a UIView category but it's available only for instances of type: UITextView, MKMapView and UIWebView.

So you can either:

• print UIView using it's layer attribute and flattening all its content
• initialize a UIWebView with the content to print and giving its viewPrintFormatter attribute to a pageRenderer and render each page