Printing Techniques Advice

Question

I need to add printing to my application, but am not sure how to go about it. My original plan was to use FOP to produce a PDF, display that in swing and then ask the user if they wanted to print it. However, after reading about it today, it seems like this might be a difficult method, with Adobe no longer supporting the java PDF bean. Then I thought about creating a panel with my data on it and getting java to print that, but I'm not sure if that is any better. Most (99%) of the time printing will be A4 portrait, but I wanted to allow for other page sizes and orientations. Can anyone recommend a technique I could use?
Thanks

Answer 1

this probably isnt how the more experienced would do it
but this is a start.
replace my variables with whatever.
this is printing a BufferedeImage that is 1024 by 658
public void Print(){
     PrinterJob printerJob = PrinterJob.getPrinterJob();
     Book book = new Book();
     book.append( this, pf );
     printerJob.setPageable(book);
     boolean doPrint = printerJob.printDialog();
     if (doPrint) {
     try {
     printerJob.print();
     } catch (PrinterException exception) {
     System.err.println("Printing error: " + exception);
public int print(Graphics g, PageFormat pf, int pageIndex) {
     Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g;
     g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
     g2d.translate( pf.getImageableX(), pf.getImageableY() );
     disableDoubleBuffering(mainpanel);
     // scale to fill the page
     double dl = pf.getImageableWidth();
     double dh = pf.getImageableHeight();
     double xScale = dl / (1024);
     double yScale = dh / (768);
     g2d.scale( xScale, yScale);
     // draw picture
     subpicture = picture.getSubimage(vzx, vzy, vzl, vzh);
     BufferedImage img = new BufferedImage( (int)dl, (int)dh, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
     img = scaleImage(subpicture, 1024, 768);
     // black and white
     if( chBW.isSelected() == true ){
     img = convertBW(img);
     g2d.drawImage(     img,
                                             null,
                                             0,
                                             0 );
     enableDoubleBuffering(mainpanel);
     return Printable.PAGE_EXISTS;
public void disableDoubleBuffering(Component c) {
    RepaintManager currentManager = RepaintManager.currentManager(c);
    currentManager.setDoubleBufferingEnabled(false);
public void enableDoubleBuffering(Component c) {
    RepaintManager currentManager = RepaintManager.currentManager(c);
    currentManager.setDoubleBufferingEnabled(true);
}