Using Resources to Create Printing Extensions and Printer Drivers
Printing extensions and printer drivers are very similar entities. Each contains a number of resources and overrides a certain number of the printing messages to provide its functionality. Each printing extension and printing driver includes resources for such diverse purposes as
All of the resources that you need to define for printing extensions and printer drivers are described in the chapter "Printing Resources" in this book. Some resources are required for both extensions and drivers, some are required for only one, and some
- displaying extension, driver, and desktop printer icons
- displaying dialog box panels and defining controls
- specifying of which kind of device communications your driver uses, such as
serial or PAP- specifying which messages the extension or driver overrides
- defining when an extension needs to be loaded into memory
- specifying the imaging system (raster, vector, PostScript, or portable digital document) that your printer driver uses
- defining imaging options such as color and grayscale control
- defining status and aler,t conditions and displaying information about them
are optional.QuickDraw GX allows you to define much of the functionality of your extensions and drivers in these printing resources. Given that QuickDraw GX also provides default implementations for most of the printing messages, you can develop many printing extensions and printer drivers without writing much code. In fact, some very useful printing extensions (including the confidential stamp extension) and some PostScript printer drivers have been written by overriding only one or two printing messages.
Subtopics
- Overriding Printing Messages
- Defining Components of the User Interface
- Planning How to Write a Printing Extension or Printer Driver
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