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From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: How do I write a serial printer dri
Message-ID: <104700060@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Feb 89 18:20:00 GMT
References: <89@<ANDERSS>
Lines: 30
Nf-ID: #R:<ANDERSS:89:p.cs.uiuc.edu:104700060:000:1320
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Feb 24 12:20:00 1989


Here are some information sources for printer drivers on the mac --

1.  MacTutor had an article by Earle Horton, Nov + Dec 1987.  It gives
a short explanation and lots of code for a serial printer driver.
This driver works, but seems to have some serious bugs (I typed it in
and found them -- my apologies to Earle who is on the net).

2.  The original "phonebook" prerelease version of Inside Macintosh (1985)
describes printing in much more detail.  Our university library has a
copy of the phonebook.  This really gives the best explanation
available, but is way out of date.  Perhaps you can find a veteran
programmer who will loan you his "phonebook".

3.  There is a very recent technote about PrGeneral, I believe, but
this is sort of off-the-topic.

4.  I've been told the printer part of the Mac OS will change, and
Apple is discouraging people from writing printer drivers at this time.


The problem is, you must deal with two types of complexity at once (a)
writing a driver, and (b) writing (essentially) a printing previewer
of some sort.  This is why I haven't done further experimentation --
no time to do all this learning....


Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801      
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies