This is a guest post by Adrià Mercader.
Even in the current digital era, being able to print maps from geospatial applications is still a very commonly requested feature. Traditionally, there have been two main approaches to the map printing on browser applications: handling it either on the client or on the server. In the first case, a new page is opened with the suitable size for a common paper format (e.g. A4 portrait) and is printed with the browser’s print function. This is probably the easiest way to go if you have a very basic map and you don’t need a complex layout, and big guys like Google Maps do it this way. The second option is based on sending all necessary information to a remote printing service, which will produce an output file (generally a PDF) ready to be printed. This allows for more complex layouts, different page sizes, etc. but with the drawback of being more difficult to build and maintain.
Fortunately though, the MapFish mapping framework includes a powerful printing module that allows you to define complex layouts and provides a protocol that can be integrated seamlessly with GeoExt based applications. The layouts can include legends, attribute tables, external images and custom variables sent from the client, and are configured via files with the YAML format. The MapFish site has a complete reference of the configuration file syntax.