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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.

Current information on this Reference Library topic can be found here:

Setting A Default Papertype for GX Printers

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>

Q: My driver has a 'ptyp' of "A4 portrait" as the default paper type (via the isDefaultpapertype flag). When a user chooses my driver from Page Setup dialog, "A4" is selected as the default paper type in the desktop printer, though my driver has no 'ptyp' named "A4".

How can I set my own paper type ("A4 portrait") as the default?

A: Unfortunately, this is a bug in QuickDraw GX.

GX internally adds the standard paper types (e.g., A4, US Letter, etc,) to your driver. The bug is that GX thinks it is finding a better fit for the current page dimensions than the assigned A4 portrait paper type. It then defaults to GX's internal A4 paper type. In other words, the paper matching code is working incorrectly.

If you are defaulting to a non-standard paper type, such as Letterhead, Stationery or Three-hole Punch, the best workaround is to remove that paper type from the Extensions folder.

If you are defaulting to another paper type, then the easiest thing you can do is to open your driver with ResEdit and remove or edit the 'ptyp' resource for the paper type that is incorrectly matching (open up the resource in ResEdit, and you'll see the paper type name embedded in the data).

This is the only way to correct the problem at this time. It is not very user-friendly, but it will force the driver to default to the correct paper type.

[Apr 08 1996]