Perhaps I’m over-thinking this.
On a desktop app, you attach a graphics object to a printer… draw on the graphics object… eject the page and repeat as necessary.
But with iOS you don’t seem to have that paradighm. It seems you must create the entire document, save it into a file of some type, and then “transmit” it to either another computer or an air-print enabled printer.
The document I need to produce is only a few pages (almost 100% graphics), so I guess putting it a file in /Documents is not out of the question.
but to get a hard-copy into a users hands…
- Send via Airprint
- Pro : directly supported by iOS
- Con : requires the user have proper equipment (AP compatible)
- Con : print out may be at a location other than the users home
- Send via eMail
- Pro : directly supported by iOS
- Pro : can be sent to any email address
- Send via iTunes
- Pro : can be accessed by attaching device to an iTunes computer with no addtional interaction on the iPhone/iPad device
- Con : device has to be “authorized” to the iTunes computer, which may not be acceptable if its not the iPhone owners device
Basically the app is a party game… a game which can be played with a specific graphic image for each player. The idea was for those with the app installed on their iPhone/iPad, they could play right on the device. For those at the party without an iPhone/iPad, a paper game board (each is unique to the player) could be printed out so everyone could play.
Any other ideas? comments? insights that I missed?
And I’m guessing I need to create a “picture” object the size/resolution of the printed page for any of these to work?
another idea, instead of a “picture” object for the docuemnt, I could create HTML, but that would reqquire I host all the graphic images on a webserver … so Iguess thats not such a good idea after all