Hi fellow members, Yep! AFAIK, in a web application, this is the only way it will work, _provided_ that the user uses IE and has a local Word installation available. Then you may load the Word document into the frame and print it via the browser's 'Print' button. Note: this only works because IE is implemented as an OLE document server which automatically starts Word as a background process if needed. Furthermore, in a web app, there is no great use for JNI on the client, as the VM runs on the server, and that one may easily be some thousand miles away ;) And as Word is only available on the Microsoft platform, even this won't work in any other configuration. Never really tried the 'window.print()' approach, that may work as well, but keep in mind that it requires scripting, and users tend to disable this feature for security reasons (same is true for starting something in an IFRAME and cross-frame access to an URL which the browser _thinks_ is coming from two different servers, btw). To make it short, there is no clean oder 'decent' solution to the problem. Still, you could convert the Word document to HTML prior to delivery on serverside, provided that the user shall have no means of interactively modifying it clientside. In this case, a possible approach might be to retrieve the document from the database, store it as a local file on the server, write a JNI Adapter (or use one of the existing ones, use Google) which triggers a ser- verside instance of Word (limiting your app to the Windows Platform as well ;), have Word store the result as an HTML document and present that one to the client. Better not even think about scalability and thread issues; in any case, there is no clean and easy way out. Note: the actual problem ist just that the Word document format is proprietary and nothing a browser understands by itself.
-- Chris (SCPJ2) NB. There is an Apache project named POI dealing with 'natively' accessing the 'Compound Document Format' via Java, currently limited to Excel, but still worth a look (www.apache.org). ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rodrigo Ruiz Aguayo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 12:35 PM Subject: Re: printing a document on click of button > You could try to download the file to a hidden frame (or iframe), and once downloaded, print it. ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff SERVLET-INTEREST". Archives: http://archives.java.sun.com/archives/servlet-interest.html Resources: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/external-resources.html LISTSERV Help: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/user/user.html
