MacApp 2.0b5 Printing Release Notes

( MacApp® 2.0bS Printing Release Notes Curt Bianchi This ERS is separated into three parts. The first part is a general overview of how printing works in MacApp. I felt this was necessary since the original MacApp manual had very limited documentation on printing. The second section describes the view methods related to printing, and the third section describes the TStdPrintHandler class. How Printing Works in MacApp Printing in MacApp is accomplished by objects called print handlers. MacApp supplies two print handler classes. TPrintHandler is a "null" print handler that isn't capable of printing: it simply defines the minimal print handler interface. TStdPrintHandler, in the UPrinting unit, fully implements standard Macintosh printing for spooled (ImageWriter®) and non-spooled (LaserWriter®) devices, as well as handling printing-related issues such as page setup and screen feedback of printing information. Printing is accomplished through the cooperation of a print handler and a view. A print handler must always be coupled to a view; otherwise the print handler has nothing to print. Print handlers handle all of the mechanics of printing (the print loop, spooling, communicating with the Print Manager, and so on), while the view performs the actual drawing within each page. A set of view methods exists that are called from the print handler. These methods allow you to customize many aspects of printing for a particular view, without the need to override TStdP rintHandler. To customize print behavior it is usually sufficient to override the view methods related to printing. It is rare that TStdPrintHandler must be overridden, but you certainly aren't prevented from doing so. A print handler is usually created along with the view it prints, in the document's DoMakeViews method. Only one print handler needs to be created for a hierarchy of views. The print handler will print the view with which it is associated and all of its subviews. Types of Printing Setup Supported by TStdPrintHandler Printing is performed by calling the print handler's Print method. Generally you don't call Print directly. It is called for you by the print handler's DoMenuCommand, in response to Print or Print One commands, or when Finder printing. MacApp will perform different types of setup before calling Print. The types of setup are as follows: Normal Before Print is called, PoseJobDialog is called to gather print job information. This is the technique used when the user chooses the Print menu command Print One No job dialog is displayed. The print job information is set up by validating the print record and forcing all pages to be printed. Therefore, any valid print record information will be carried forward from the last time the print handler printed. This is the technique used when the user chooses the Print One menu command. ( Wed. Aug 3,1988 © 1988 ti Apple Computer 1 Fmder The page setup and job dialogs may be posed before printing. The use of the dialogs …