Print richedit with background color

Question

I am outputting text from a trichedit delphi control to a printer. There is a background image, so I use EM_FORMATRANGE with this logic ...

myrichedit.Perform(EM_FORMATRANGE, 1, Longint(@Range)); 

... and this works great, except that when rendering text, it always has a white background, regardless of the richedit color. Any idea why?

EDIT: From a published comment:

Range is RANGEFORMAT and is assigned the following values:

 Range.hdc := aCanvas.Handle; Range.hdcTarget := aCanvas.Handle; LogX := GetDeviceCaps(Range.hdc, LOGPIXELSX); LogY := GetDeviceCaps(Range.hdc, LOGPIXELSY); Range.rc.Left := x * 1440 div LogX; Range.rc.Right := (x+re.ClientWidth) * 1440 div LogX; // (1440=twips/inch) Range.rc.Top := y * 1440 div LogY; Range.rc.Bottom := 5000 * 1440 div LogY; // Some bigish number Range.rcPage := Range.rc; Range.chrg.cpMin := 0; Range.chrg.cpMax := -1; 

Answer 1

What I found is that you can set the background of individual characters with code (before adding text to richedit) ...

 var Format: CHARFORMAT2; begin ... myrichedit.SelStart:=myrichedit.GetTextLen; FillChar(Format, SizeOf(Format), 0); with Format do begin cbSize := SizeOf(Format); dwMask := CFM_BACKCOLOR; crBackColor := charbackgroundcolor; myrichedit.Perform(EM_SETCHARFORMAT, SCF_SELECTION, Longint(@Format)); end; myrichedit.SetText:='Hello'; 

... but to get the background color for the entire block of text, do this to draw the text ...

 var size : Tsize; Range: TFormatRange; Rect: TRect; LogX, LogY : Integer; bm : tbitmap; aCanvas : TCanvas; ExStyle: DWord; begin aCanvas:=Printer.Canvas; Range.hdc := aCanvas.Handle; Range.hdcTarget := aCanvas.Handle; LogX := GetDeviceCaps(Range.hdc, LOGPIXELSX); LogY := GetDeviceCaps(Range.hdc, LOGPIXELSY); Range.rc.Left := x * 1440 div LogX; Range.rc.Right := (x+myrichedit.ClientWidth) * 1440 div LogX; // (1440=twips/inch) Range.rc.Top := y * 1440 div LogY; Range.rc.Bottom := 5000 * 1440 div LogY; // Some bigish number Range.rcPage := Range.rc; Range.chrg.cpMin := 0; Range.chrg.cpMax := -1; myrichedit.Perform(EM_FORMATRANGE, 0, Longint(@Range)); // Measure the formatted text rect:=Range.rc; rect.Left:=Range.rc.Left * LogX div 1440; rect.Top:=Range.rc.Top * LogY div 1440; rect.Right:=Range.rc.Right * LogX div 1440; rect.Bottom:=Range.rc.Bottom * LogY div 1440; acanvas.Brush.Color:=myblockcolor; acanvas.FillRect(rect); // Fill the background rectangle ExStyle := GetWindowLong(re.Handle, GWL_EXSTYLE); // Draw richedit transparently over coloured area ExStyle := ExStyle or WS_EX_TRANSPARENT; SetWindowLong(re.Handle, GWL_EXSTYLE, ExStyle); myrichedit.Perform(EM_FORMATRANGE, 1, Longint(@Range)); end;