| Introduction > VSPrinter8 Control |
The VSPrinter8 control provides VSReport8 with printing and previewing capabilities. It can be used to create documents without VSReport8, and has a rich feature set of its own.
To preview a report, you need both controls. VSReport8 reads data from a database and formats it according to the report definition, then sends its output to the VSPrinter8 control.
If you only want to create reports and save them into HTML or PDF files, you do not need to use a visible instance of the VSPrinter control on your form. However, VSReport8 uses VSPrinter internally, so VSPrinter needs to be installed and registered on the user's computer even if you are not using a visible instance of it. The control can be distributed royalty-free with your applications.