DESKTOP FRAMEWORKS CONCEPTS

Printers

TPrinter instances represent actual printers. The printer provides three things that are essential to printing:

A collection of page descriptions that represent all the page types available on the printer. At least one page description is designated as the default for the printer.
A list of all the available media types.
A device job description (required for every print job).

You use TPrinter member functions to handle print jobs. TPrinter provides functions for canceling, deferring, adding, and removing print jobs from the printer queue.

Using printers

Printer Handlers construct printers maintained by Printing services. When you request a printer, or the end user specifies a print option, the system passes you a printer. You cannot instantiate your own printers, but you can save and resurrect printers stored with folios or flattened in data dictionaries.

NOTE Currently, you must construct the printer before you can use it. Future releases of the system will provide TPrinter objects. To instantiate a printer, use:

TPrinter printer(TPrinter::kSystemPrinter);

Matching printers

While a user is editing a document, access to an actual printer is not required. The only printing resource needed is a page description, and the one associated with the folio is sufficient. Access to the folio's page description is supported without any printer involvement.

If an end user attempts to print to a non-existent printer, the system throws an exception. The system looks for an alternative printer that matches the original printer in type or capabilities and notifies the end user. The end user can then confirm the match or select another printer.

If there are no matches, no other printers available, and no selected alternative, the folio cannot be printed, but the end user can continue editing.

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