Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!well!wdh
From: wdh@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Hofmann)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Page Rectangles
Summary: You're best off ignoring Learning to Drive
Message-ID: <21149@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 12 Oct 90 16:03:41 GMT
References: <10603@goofy.Apple.COM> <52630@brunix.UUCP> <10608.2713216d@amherst.bitnet>
Organization: Flashpoint
Lines: 23

In article <10608.2713216d@amherst.bitnet> djvelleman@amherst.bitnet writes:
>  For the benefit of those of us who are just learning to print:  What is this
>article "Learning to Drive"?  Where is it?  Should I read it if I'm trying to
>learn to implement printing?  Is there anything else I should be reading,
>other than IM?
"Learning to Drive" is a document which describes information *printer driver*
writers need to know.  Unless you're writing drivers, there isn't too much
reason to read it.  The only thing of interest is a complete description of
the internal data structures, which are guaranteed to change anyway.

In the process of writing the Printing Manager section of Apple Dev U's new
self-paced Mac Programming Fundamentals course, I decided that there are only
six fields you need to know about for normal printing: rPage in the TPrInfo
record, the first four fields (iFstPage, iLstPage, iCopies and bjDocLoop) of
the prJob subrecord, and the rPage field of the prInfo subrecord.  You'll be
happier if you ignore everything else.

Printing is really fairly straighforward.  Besides IM, you should read the
Tech Notes, in particular, 72, 91, 118, 122 and 161.  Especially TN161, which
has a more up-to-date printing loop.  Once you have a printing loop written,
it's pretty generic.

-Bill Hofmann