Server-side Printing With Formatted Text

[Stuart Woodard]

I am struggling to develop a robust mechanism for server-side printing with
formatted documents.

I need to produce print-spool files from the remote server-side application.
This isn't straightforward with PrintDocument, so I have had to create a new
class that uses Windows calls from within the PrintPage event. That solved
the spool file problem, but I have since been having trouble with formatted
text.

To use PrintPage events, I created a new class to inherit from the RichText
control and called FORMATRANGE directly for each page. Alas, RichText isn't
robust for server-side .Net remoting and fails sporadically with a 'Class
Already Exists' automation error. I have looked into using Word through
Office Automation, but this isn't robust for server-side deployment, and the
HTML classes don't support sophisticated printing (using PrintPage events).

Am I missing a trick with RichText or is there some other way to approach
this? The nearest commercial solution seems to be the TX Text Control, but
the server-side version only runs under ActiveX and costs $2,500.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Stuart