Cocoa® Programming for Mac OS® X For Dummies®

Chapter 14. Printing with Cocoa

In This Chapter

• Understanding the process of printing in Cocoa

• Adjusting the page settings

• Running a print job

• Printing to PDF files

Although Cocoa's on-screen display of graphics and text is world class, that doesn't mean Apple forgot about printing. Known for decades as one of the innovative adopting forces behind technologies, such as PostScript and laser printing, Apple continues in this tradition by adding easy-to-implement printing features to Cocoa. This chapter shows you how to add printing features to your Cocoa applications. Although printing has been a messy topic for programmers in the past, Cocoa makes it simple to implement some sophisticated printing features to your projects. You'll love the consistency that Apple provides you as a developer, and your users will love the professional printing results that your application implements.

Note

To begin working with printing, copy the Start source code for this chapter to your hard drive. (To download the code, go to www.dummies.com/go/cocoafd.) The printing project for this chapter is based on the completed project from the end of Chapter 12. Because you can print using any view, you can use the graphics view from Chapter 12 as your printable canvas.

How Printing Works in Cocoa

To help you achieve great results that address all your printing needs, Cocoa offers a collection of important classes for printing in Mac OS X. You use these classes together to add printing to your applications:

• NSView: ...