Q:
Do I need to call PrJobDialog to print a document? Why?
A:
Yes. In Inside Macintosh:Imaging with QuickDraw, pages 9-18 and 9-19, it states:
"When writing an application, the code you provide that handles printing
is referred to as the _printing loop_. A printing loop calls all the
Printing Manager routines necessary to print a document. In general, a
printing loop must do the following tasks:
[...]
* It must display the job dialog box as appropriate by using the
PrJobDialog function or, for a customized job dialog box, the PrDlgMain
function. (When the user is printing from the Finder, display the job
dialog box only once, and then use the PrJobMerge procedure to apply the
information from this dialog box to any other documents selected by the
user.)
[...]"
The reason for this is that many drivers (most notably LaserWriter 8)
don't initialize the job-specific settings until PrJobInit is called.
Without this call, they fall back on the default, which is usually
stored in the driver in the PREC 0 resource. This default may not have
the settings that your user desires.
The normal definition of the PREC (which maps to a TPrint structure)
doesn't have as much space as LaserWriter 8 needs. Because of this,
LaserWriter 8 stores some settings in this PREC 0 resource, and stores
others in the "LaserWriter 8 Prefs" file. This separation of LaserWriter
settings can wreak havoc on a job run without the PrJobDialog call.
If you absolutely MUST not display the PrJob dialog, there are two ways
to work around it. These are not supported methods, and by using either
of them you've just made your application hostile to QuickDraw GX and
your application may break with future releases of the LaserWriter 8
driver.
That said, you can either:
- Call
PrJobDialog either when you make your final build, or have users
do it as part of their preferences (or both), and save the resulting print record. Every time
you print, merge that print record in with a call to PrJobMerge. This way each
document can have its own page setup, accomodating things like printing on A4 paper instead of letter. OR
- "Display" the dialog, but never let the user see it. You can accomplish this by
calling
PrJobInit, moving the resulting dialog offscreen, dismissing the
dialog yourself, and calling PrDlgMain. Please see this sample file
for an idea of how to accomplish this.
See Inside Macintosh: Imaging with QuickDraw, Chapter 9 for further
information on the Macintosh Print Manager.
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