About Page Formatting and Dialog Box Customization
Page formatting is the ability to format individual pages of a document differently from the default format for the document. The available formats are specified by the printer driver. You specify a format object when you print each page of a document. If you specify the first format in the job object's format list, the default format for the document is used. If you specify another format, it is used to format the page. For more information about printing pages and specifying formats, see the chapter "Core Printing Features" in this book.Typically, you associate the default format object with each page in the document and let the user choose the pages to format differently from the default. The user can choose the format with the Custom Page Setup menu item of the File menu, which displays the Custom Page Setup dialog box on the user's screen. You are responsible for associating the chosen format with the page. Thus, you need to determine which format objects are in use and save them with the job object when the document is saved. You also need to retrieve them along with the job object when the document is opened. For more information about saving and retrieving these job objects, see "Associating Format Objects With Document Pages" on page 3-61.
The Custom Page Setup dialog box provided by QuickDraw GX allows the user to format a page, remove the format and revert to the default format, change the paper type for the page, and change the page's scale and orientation. You can allow more choices by customizing this dialog box. For example, you can allow the user to specify a halftone to be applied to the page. Because the Custom Page Setup dialog box provided by QuickDraw GX does not provide an option for specifying a page halftone, the printer driver or a printing extension must customize the dialog box, or you must customize the dialog box in the application.
If you customize a dialog box, you typically gather additional information from the user, although you can also customize a dialog box to restrict the user's choices. The additional information is stored in a collection object. In the halftone example, the printer driver stores the possible halftone options in the format collection. You can customize the Page Setup dialog box to allow a halftone to be chosen for the default format, or you can customize the Custom Page Setup dialog box to allow a halftone to be chosen for a particular page.
QuickDraw GX allows you to customize any of the print dialog boxes:
- The Print dialog box, in which the user specifies parameters for printing the job.
- The Page Setup dialog box, in which the user specifies default formatting by selecting the formatting printer. This dialog box is also used to specify the default paper type.
- The Custom Page Setup dialog box, in which the user specifies formatting for a particular page, including the paper type.
- The Printing Status dialog box, in which the status of the spooling operation is displayed. This dialog box is not usually customized. You may choose, however, to suppress the display of the dialog box under certain conditions.
Subtopics
- About Collection Objects
- About Page Formatting
- Dialog Box Customization
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