Technical Q&As


QD52 - How to Find the 'Printer Descriptions' folder'
(17-November-97)


Q Most of the special system folders have documented ways to access them regardless of the localization of the operating system. We have been unable to find a way to access the "Printer Descriptions" folder on foreign systems without explicitly knowing the localized name of the folder. Can you point us to where this might be documented or how to access it?

A Unfortunately, under System 7.x, there is no good way to do this. The only way that developers have been able to install their PPDs correctly is to use a 2-tiered approach:
  1. Use PrGeneral with the PSPrimaryPPDOp opcode to retrieve the FSSpec record locating the current PPD file chosen for the printer, and the parent directory that you are interested in. (from "LaserWriter 8 for Fun and Profit" in develop issue 16 (page 78)). Then place the PPD file there.

  2. If your driver does not support PrGeneral, then you must look for a folder called 'Printer Descriptions' and install the PPD there. This of course requires a list of what that folder gets named for various localized systems.

Under System 8.0, Apple has added a Find Folder Selector for this folder, 'ppdf', that makes installation of your PPD easier for Mac OS 8.0 and above. Please see Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials, page 7-54 for more information on FindFolder.

Note:
The LaserWriter driver (version 8.5.1 and before) does not take advantage of the 'ppdf' FindFolder feature and still only looks in the Extensions:Printer Descriptions folder for PPDs (as opposed to System: Printer Descriptions). This will be fixed in a future release of the LaserWriter 8 driver.


-- Ingrid Kelly
Worldwide Developer Technical Support

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Updated: 12/18/97