Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!gore!jacob
From: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: The Save button in PrintPanel
Message-ID: <130035@gore.com>
Date: 9 Nov 89 08:18:59 GMT
References: <130032@gore.com>
Reply-To: jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore)
Organization: Gore Enterprises
Lines: 37

Sigh.  I get the feeling that I'm using the wrong tool for the job.
Namely, the interface provided by the AppKit, one that every user of a NeXT
expects, to print -- of all strange and weird things -- TEXT!  From a file!!
Already in conforming PostScript!!!  On a system designed around a
postscript server!!!!  Unthinkable!!!!!  I can just hear those electrons
screaming now, as they hit the cathode: "How DARE he print something that
is not in a Window!"

All the documentation I've seen either tells me how to print a picture of a
window, or it lists a bunch of methods that a WYSIWIG word processing
application, if it somehow overrides them to do the right thing, is
supposed to use to "produce" conforming PostScript document.  It will go
into a spool file.  The PrintPanel knows where it is.  The programmer needs
not know how to just give the PrintPanel a file of PostScript.  After all,
the PostScript will always come from a Window, and all these nice methods
are the ones that generate the PostScript.  We mustn't bother the
programmer with irrelevant details.  He can just printPSCode the Window.
Or use WriteNow.  Or write something as complicated as WriteNow... so what
if it's just to print one silly file, already in PostScript.

I am not a WYSIWYG-hater, really, I'm not.  But this is one case where I
dont't want to See what I need to Get!

It may be hard to tell (:-), but I'm quite frustrated.  If I'm missing
something that's supposed to be obvious, PLEASE let me know.  I don't care
if it's a very stupid omission on my part -- I'll be most happy to have my
nose rubbed in it, by anybody, as long as it results in me knowing what to
do here!

All I'm trying to do is print a PostScript file, which happens to be
WriteNow output (saved through its PrintPanel), and do it using a
PrintPanel, so that the user can select the printer, the page range,
preview it, etc.  How?

Jacob
--
Jacob Gore		Jacob@Gore.Com			boulder!gore!jacob