Flash 8 Documentation

ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference > ActionScript language elements > Global Functions > print function

print function

print(target:Object, boundingBox:String) : Void

Prints the target movie clip according to the boundaries specified in the parameter (bmovie, bmax, or bframe). If you want to print specific frames in the target movie clip, attach a #p frame label to those frames. Although print() results in higher quality prints than printAsBitmap() it cannot be used to print movie clips that use alpha transparencies or special color effects.

If you use bmovie for the boundingBox parameter but do not assign a #b label to a frame, the print area is determined by the Stage size of the loaded movie clip. (The loaded movie clip does not inherit the main movie clip's Stage size.)

All the printable elements in a movie clip must be fully loaded before printing can begin.

The Flash Player printing feature supports PostScript and non-PostScript printers. Non-PostScript printers convert vectors to bitmaps.

Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Player 4 - (4.0.20.0) <If you are authoring for Flash Player 7 or later, you can create a PrintJob object, which gives you (and the user) more control over the printing process. For more information, see the PrintJob class entry.

Parameters

target:Object - The instance name of a movie clip to print. By default, all of the frames in the target instance can be printed. If you want to print specific frames in the movie clip, assign a #p frame label to those frames.

boundingBox:String - A modifier that sets the print area of the movie clip. Enclose this parameter in quotation marks (" or '), and specify one of the following values:

• bmovie Designates the bounding box of a specific frame in a movie clip as the print area for all printable frames in the movie clip. Assign a #b frame label to the frame whose bounding box you want to use as the print area.
• bmax Designates a composite of all the bounding boxes of all the printable frames as the print area. Specify bmax if the printable frames in your movie clip vary in size.
• bframe Indicates that the bounding box of each printable frame should be used as the print area for that frame, which changes the print area for each frame and scales the objects to fit the print area. Use bframe if you have objects of different sizes in each frame and want each object to fill the printed page.

Example

The following example prints all of the printable frames in holder_mc with a print area defined by the bounding box of each frame:

this.createEmptyMovieClip("holder_mc", 999);
holder_mc.loadMovie("http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/images/image1.jpg");

this.myBtn_btn.onRelease = function() {
 print(this._parent.holder_mc, "bframe");
};

In the previous ActionScript, you could replace bframe with bmovie so that the print area is defined by the bounding box of a frame with the #b frame label attached.

See also

printAsBitmap function, printAsBitmapNum function, PrintJob, printNum function

Version 8

Comments

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eigenstates said on May 4, 2006 at 12:41 PM :

How do you send something to STDOUT? I simply want to check a variable in the output window.

peterd_mm said on May 12, 2006 at 6:36 PM :

eigenstates,

You would use the trace() statement.

Regards,
_peter

No screen name said on Mar 9, 2007 at 11:02 AM :

Is it possible not to directly print but save the file (image) to a certain directory/path?

is it jpg?

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