Learning Carbon

Chapter 9. Printing

Printing is one of the basic functions provided by most applications. When printing a document, a user may first wish to specify settings such as the page size and orientation, the scaling percentage, the page range, and the number of copies. A user may also wish to specify a printer from a list of available printers and choose settings specific to that printer, such as paper tray, duplex printing, or print quality. The application itself may supply additional printing options, such as whether to print odd or even numbered pages or registration marks. If the user doesn’t specifically choose any setting, the application should supply reasonable default values if possible.

Because printing involves many variables, your application may have a lot of work to do to deliver robust printing support. However, Mac OS X provides features to help your application gather and work with printing information. These features involve interaction that takes place between the user, the application, the operating system, and the printer:

• Your application can call on Mac OS X to display the Page Setup dialog, shown in Figure 9.1. The Page Setup dialog lets the user choose page format settings, such as paper size, orientation, and scale, before printing. You can save these settings with a document and use them again when the document is reopened.

  

  Figure 9-1. The Page Setup dialog, ...