Mac OS X in a Nutshell

The Print Dialog

Almost every Mac OS X application supports a File → Print (

-P) menu command. When selected, a print dialog (Figure 8-1) appears, usually as a sheet attached to the foremost document window.

Figure 8-1. The standard Print dialog (as a sheet)

The dialog contains three menus. The first two are always available:

Printer

This menu, shown in Figure 8-2, contains the name or IP address of every printer you have defined through the Print Center application. An additional choice, Edit Printer List..., will launch Print Center and summon its printer list editing window for you (see Section 8.3.1, later in this chapter).

Figure 8-2. Print Center’s printer list window

The menu’s default selection—appearing in the menu after you call up the dialog through File → Print (

-P))—is whichever printer you’ve named as default through Print Center.

Presets

This menu lets you load sets of print settings that you’ve previously used and saved. See Section 8.2.1 for more information.

Printer Output Menu and Panes

An unlabeled third menu on the Print dialog lets you navigate between the dialog’s various ...