How to render a printable image from a SWF

Question

I'm working on a project at the moment where the client uses an off-the-shelf Flash library to display data against a map. It's a SWF that we feed some XML data and it renders it in various ways, such as a map of the UK with each county represented with a different colour depending on the data we feed it.

As it's an off the shelf, we only have the SWF, no means to edit the Flash file.

We need to make the reports universally printable from the browser. The idea was to have a container SWF that used the BitmapData methods on it to effectively do a screengrab of what the map ("child") SWF is showing and render it in the page as the image generated for printing(i.e only showing the image in the print stylesheet).

The issue is that I believe this will give us a 72DPI image for printing, which will produce too-low-resolution image for printing.

I could use a solution that will give a decent resolution printout alongside the HTML in the rest of the document.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Answer 1

It's possible to print very specific things in your flash movie and to change a wide range of settings for your print job. For example, you can specify vector or bitmap printing. There's a pretty detailed sub-system for printing and the best way to learn is probably from the Adobe AS3 documents. Check out Chapter 25 of this pdf.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Flivedocs.adobe.com%2Fflex%2F3%2FprogAS%5Fflex3.pdf&ei=Us0FS7z6G4zRngf1lr29Cw&usg=AFQjCNE270VxK-qUM32YFBUv5SVjx1%5FhSw&sig2=nBiI287pCxRnPd46YGD4uw

Good luck!