User Guide

380 Chapter 18: Printing from SWF Files
About scaling
A print job using the PrintJob class prints Flash content, by default, without scaling it. For
example, an object that is 144 pixels wide on screen will print as 144 points, or 2 inches wide
(One point equals one pixel. In the authoring tool, 72 pixels equals one inch; on paper, 72 points
equals one inch.)
To understand how Flash screen content maps to the printed page, it helps to understand screen
and print units of measure. Pixels are a screen measurement and points are a print measurement.
Both pixels and points equal 1/72 of an inch. A twip is 1/20 of a point and pixel.
The following list further illustrates the relationship between units of measure.
• 1 pixel = 20 twips
• 1 point = 20 twips
• 72 pixels = 1 inch
• 72 points = 1 inch
• 567 twips = 1 cm
• 1440 twips = 1 inch
To scale a movie clip before printing, set its
MovieClip.xscale and MovieClip.yscale
properties before calling this method, and set them back to their original values afterward. If you
scale a movie clip and also pass a value for the
printArea property, the pixel values passed to
printArea reflect the original size of the movie clip. That is, if you set a movie clip’s scale to 50%
and specify a print area of 500 x 500 pixels, the content that prints is identical to the content that
would print if you didn’t scale the movie clip; however, it prints at half the size. For more
information, see
PrintJob.addPage() in Flash ActionScript Language Reference.
Specifying printing as a vector image or bitmap graphic
The
options parameter lets you specify whether to print as a vector graphic or bitmap image.
When using this optional parameter, use the following syntax:
{printAsBitmap:boolean}
The default value is false, which represents a request for vector printing. Remember the
following suggestions when determining which value to use:
• If the content that you’re printing includes a bitmap image, you should specify that the print
job print as a bitmap to include any transparency and color effects.
• Conversely, if the content does not include bitmap images, you should specify that the print
job print as vector graphics to take advantage of the higher image quality.
Specifying a frame to print
The
frameNum parameter lets you specify a frame to print. If you do not specify a frame number
parameter, the current frame of the target or level specified as the first parameter when adding a
page prints by default.