Technical Q&As

GXPD 18 - Saving Paper Type Information (1-May-95)

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 I need to be able to save unique paper type information in the Resource fork, which is contained in a collection. How can I access DTP from ModalDialog?

A Send_GXxxx calls must be made from overrides, so what your application (or filterproc) can do is override gxJobIdle, do the Send_GXxxx call there, and then, when in its non-override code, call GXJobIdle(currentJob) to invoke the override. Make sure you install and remove the override right where you need it, so that odd things don't happen at other times. Also note that you need the current job reference, and you have to pass that to your filter proc.

If you're using GXAlertTheUser to handle your dialog, you can override GXHandleAlertEvent and send your messages without this workaround. In either case, your goal is to get the collection item, flatten, and then save it to the DTP with GXWriteDTPData.

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