About QuickDraw GX Printing Extensions and Printer Drivers
Printing extensions are add-on software components that you can create to extend the printing capabilities of applications. Printing extensions are used for tasks such as supporting hardware additions and modifying the appearance of printed pages and allow you to provide these capabilities without having to write an entire printer driver. When a user places a printing extension in the Extensions folder (which is in the System Folder), the extension is available for use.Printer drivers translate the instructions that compose QuickDraw GX shapes and pictures into printed output on a specific output device. Each printer driver sends data and instructions in a form specific to the device that it drives and manages the physical communications with that device. You need to develop a separate driver for each hardware device that has different characteristics. Whenever you create a desktop printer, the Macintosh system software loads and uses the driver for that printer.
QuickDraw GX printing extensions and printer drivers are largely data-driven and take advantage of the QuickDraw GX message-based printing architecture, which is briefly described in the next section, "QuickDraw GX Printing and Messages."
Subtopics
- QuickDraw GX Printing and Messages
- Print Imaging Systems
- Printing Phases
- Extensions, Drivers, and the User Interface
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