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Important: This document is part of the Legacy section of the ADC Reference Library. This information should not be used for new development.
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Technical Q&A GXPD21
Creating a GX Printing Extension to Obtain Print Job Information
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Important for all Apple Printing and Graphics Developers:
The information in this Technical Q & A is still relevant up to and including
Mac OS 7.6
with QuickDraw GX 1.1.5. Beginning with the release of Mac OS 8.0,
however, Apple plans to deliver a system which incorporates QuickDraw GX
graphics and typography only. QuickDraw GX printer drivers and GX printing
extensions will not be supported in Mac OS 8.0 or in future Mac OS releases. Apple's
goal is to simplify the user experience of printing by unifying the Macintosh
graphic and printing architectures and standardizing on the classic Printing
Manager.
For details on Apple's official announcement, refer to
</dev/technotes/gxchange.html>
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Q: I am attempting to write a GX Printing Extension in which I can get the job
information from the gxJobTag collection item during the despooling phase. I
need to get access to the print queues, so that I can know about every job that
is being printed when it prints. I want to set the default printer and get a
list of all installed desktop printers.
A: There is no supported mechanism an application can use to rearrange desktop
printer queues. The only way for the queues to be manipulated is by direct
action by the user. There is no API to allow an application to act on behalf of
the user.
If this functionality is implemented in a future version, it would best be
achieved by making the desktop-printer Finder extension (the part of GX which
is responsible for DTP icons and queues) fully scriptable. This would enable
both end users and applications to automate DTPs by sending the appropriate
AppleScript to the Finder.
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[May 01 1995]