Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Printer Sharing

USB printer sharing is for people (or offices) with multiple Macs connected to a network (Chapter 12), who’d rather not buy a separate printer for each machine. Instead, you connect the printer to one Mac, flip a couple of software switches, and then boom: The other Macs on the network can send their printouts to the printer without actually being attached to it—even wirelessly, if they’re on an AirPort network.

Figure 13-5. To use a USB printer that’s been shared elsewhere on the network, open the document you want to print and then choose File→Print. In the list of printers, you’ll see a new item called Shared, which lists the printers that have been shared on the network. (Point to one without clicking to view the details rectangle shown here.)

UP TO SPEEDPrinting from Classic Programs

If you imagine Mac OS X as an intervening layer between the Classic programs (see Chapter 5) and Macintosh circuitry itself, you won’t find it so surprising that printing documents from within Classic programs isn’t, shall we say, one of the highlights of the Mac OS X experience.

Classic programs can’t print to many older printers (those that use the so-called QuickDraw technology), including the ImageWriter, StyleWriter, and many in the Personal LaserWriter line. If you want to use these printers, you must restart in Mac OS 9, as described in Section 5.3 (if your Mac can, in fact, restart ...