Inside Macintosh: QuickDraw GX Printing /

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Printing With QuickDraw GX / Using Printing-Related Objects With Other QuickDraw GX Objects

Shape Objects

Shape objects specify the content of what you want to render on a page of output. The format object, for example, allows you to specify a shape to be printed as a backdrop to the document's contents.

The document's contents are also represented as shapes. For example, text is typically represented as glyph or layout shapes. Graphics are specified by graphics shapes, such as lines, rectangles, polygons, paths, and so on. QuickDraw GX represents each page of output as a picture shape that contains these other shapes.

Either you can create a picture shape that represents the contents of the entire page, or you can allow QuickDraw GX to collect into a page the shapes you specify. For example, if you choose to create a picture shape and print it as a page, you pass the picture shape to the GXPrintPage function, which spools the page to the printer.

If you choose to specify individual shapes to be included in the page, you call the GXStartPage function to start building a picture shape and call the GXDrawShape function for each shape you want to render. When you call the GXFinishPage function, QuickDraw GX spools the picture shape for the page.

For an example of each way of printing using shape objects, see the chapter "Core Printing Features" in this book.

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