Technical Q&A's

QD 29 - API for Non-GX Printing? (Updated 9-Jan-97)

Q We would like to incorporate non-GX printer technology in our line of print drivers. Is there, or will there be, an API we can follow to gain compatibility with Desktop Printing? If not, do you have any suggestions of how to obtain this functionality while minimally impacting the stability of the Mac OS?

A Currently, the only way for a third party to incorporate desktop printing is with QuickDraw GX printing. In the past, Apple has maintained that it would not release the non-GX Desktop Printing APIs; however, we recently made the following announcement:

"Regarding support for third-party non-PostScript drivers and Apple's non-GX Desktop PrintMonitor software...

By next year's Developers Conference (May'97) Apple will publish the information driver developers need to work with Desktop PrintMonitor. For the most part, this means information about the spool file format. We may also add a PrGeneral opcode to allow driver's to indicate they are compatible with Desktop PrintMonitor.
Next year - after the Developers Conference - we will release a version of Desktop PrintMonitor which will support third-party drivers which conform to the published specifications."

Please continue to watch our DevWorld site for Technotes and develop articles on these topics.

--Ingrid Kelly
Technical Support
Technical Q&As
Previous Question | Contents | Next Question