Mac OS X introduces a new printing system that is significantly different from the Classic Printing Manager available on Mac OS 8 and 9. The Carbon Printing Manager provides a bridge between these two architectures, allowing Carbon applications to print on both platforms.
On Mac OS 8 and 9, the Carbon Printing Manager is built into CarbonLib. Carbon applications running on Mac OS 8 and 9 continue to print using Classic printer drivers, and most Carbon Printing Manager functions call through to their Classic counterparts. On Mac OS X, the Printing Framework belongs to the Carbon umbrella framework. When running on Mac OS X, Carbon applications automatically use the new printing system.
The Carbon Printing Manager is designed to make the transition from Classic to Carbon as straightforward as possible. While the function names have changed, there is a high level of correspondence between Carbon and Classic printing functions, and the basic print loop model has been preserved.
Because it does not fundamentally alter the structure of your application's print loop, adopting the Carbon Printing Manager is relatively simple. The most significant change is that the data structures corresponding to the Classic print record are opaque in Carbon--meaning their contents are hidden from applications. There are new functions for accessing fields within these structures. Most other Carbon Printing Manager functions are direct replacements for Classic Printing Manager functions.