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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> |
1. Instead of putting the paper types in the DTP, have your driver create a stand-alone paper-type file in the extensions folder. To do this, create a resource file (type=uspt, creator=pted), and copy the needed resources into it. You can name the paper types so they are instructive, such as "ACME Printer 600 - Letter". Although these paper types would be available to all DTPs for your driver, GX will prompt the user if a paper mismatch error occur.
2. As you suggested, you can create an application that parses a PPD and
creates a new driver in each case. Be careful, however, to assign a unique
creator type to each driver. With this approach, you can build in custom paper
types, dialogs, code, and so on for each driver.