I currently have an App that outputs part inspection results from a database to a text file for printing/viewing. The report contains fields like, nominal size, actual size, error, tolerance, etc. The inspection results are mostly displayed in tabular format but there is also some non-tabular data. I am currently creating the report file using the standard printline commands with padding added in to align the data where required. When I am done, I either display or print the report using the standard NotePad app.
When I first created the report format, I designed it around a certain font type/size. If the font in NotePad is set to that particular type/size, the report look proper. If, however, some user gets in and changes the font type/size via the NotePad GUI, then the next person viewing the data will not see the report in the proper format. With this in mind, I am trying to come up with a fool proof way to prevent this.
What I have tried:
I have read online that there might be ways of preventing the user from editing the font in NotePad via the registry but I don't go down that route at the moment. Also, these computers are running still running Windows 2000 OS with Dot.Net 2.0 so I don't want to load or use any non standard software if it is all possible (Sorry no MS Excel or MS Word). I would like to see what other options I have to accomplish my task? I have researched online and found out that I can output the raw data directly to a printer using various Win32 API calls. I think this might work for printing but how would I go about viewing the data for cases I just want to look at the data? I have also seen a couple of articles about using print document. I created a custom chart once using this option but it seems like it might be a little overkill for just basic text data. Are there any other options that I may have missed?
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