Old Printing is a hack which I hope will not be needed for long after QuickDraw GX comes out. If you havenﾕt yet got a QuickDraw GX-compatible driver for your printer, you can use Old Printing as an interim solution, while you pester your printer vendor for an update.
What Old Printing does is give you selective access to the old Printing Manager while QuickDraw GX is installed. It provides two functions:
･ It lets you select an ﾒexceptions listﾓ of non-GX-savvy applications to be given access to the old Printing Manager. These applications will be able to print using your old non-GX-compatible printer driver, just as though QuickDraw GX were not installed.
･ It provides an application to print QuickDraw GX ﾒPortable Digital Documentsﾓ (PDDs) via the old Printing Manager. For example, you might produce these by printing to the PDD Maker GX driver.
Old Printing consists of three separate parts:
･ An INIT called ﾒOldPrint Captureﾓ. Put this in your Extensions folder. It needs to load before QuickDraw GX (which is what will normally happen, unless youﾕve renamed one or the other). It saves the original _PrGlue trap address and your old-style printer selection, before QuickDraw GX can patch one and remove the other. It also installs a piece of code which runs every time you launch an application; if the application signature matches an entry in the exceptions list, then the PrGlue trap address for that process is set to the previously-saved value, overriding any patching which may have occurred in-between.
･ A control panel called ﾒOldPrint Controlﾓ. Put this in your Control Panels folder. This lets you examine and change the exceptions list. It also contains an INIT which restores your old-style printer selection, after QuickDraw GX has removed it from your System file.
･ An application called ﾒOldPrintﾓ. This lets you print PDD files using the old Printing Manager. It works in a brute-force manner, by converting each page to a bitmap at the highest resolution supported by the printer. This is a very memory-hungry technique, which may fail with some printers.
Hints:
･ Keep your pre-GX (7.2 or older) Chooser handy, and perhaps give it another name, to avoid confusion with the GX-compatible Chooser. You use the old Chooser to select the old-style printer driver to use with the old Printing Manager. Will background printing work with old printer drivers? Probably not.
･ The OldPrint Control control panel lets you uncheck individual entries in the exceptions list. This disables the redirection to the old Printing Manager for that application, without actually removing the entry from the list, which is handy if you only want to make a temporary change.
･ Changes to an entry in the exceptions list take effect the next time you launch that application.
･ Applications are identified purely by their signature. Just something to keep in mind.
･ GX-savvy applications will continue to use the GX Printing Manager, whether you put them in the list or not. This is because they donﾕt use the PrGlue trap to do their printing.
･ BEWARE!!! ･
This is one big, nasty hack. Itﾕs purely an interim solution to what I hope will be a temporary problem. I donﾕt guarantee its reliability. Iﾕve only done limited testing with versions of QuickDraw GX up to 1.0.1. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you have problems, please let me know. I may be able to fix them. Then again, I may not.
Otherwise, enjoy.
Revision history:
･ 1994 September 19
Fixed a teentsy bug in OldPrint Control, which prevented the check boxes from responding if the list was scrolled. Added ﾒtjobﾓ to the types you can drag and drop on the OldPrint application.
