Printing from Classic Applications


Classic applications do not have access to Mac OS X printer drivers or their range of options, such as outputting PDF or previewing your output. Classic applications use the printer drivers available in the Extensions folder of the Classic application environment’s System Folder. You can’t print to Mac OS X printers from Classic applications and the same is true in reverse. The general procedures for printing, however, are the same in Classic applications as in Mac OS X applications.

This section is geared toward printing from Classic applications for users without that experience. In particular, it covers printing to networked printers because there are far more variations than we can possibly hope to cover in this space. Coverage for USB printers is brief — install your printer driver (if it’s not already there) into the Extensions folder of Classic’s System Folder using whatever installer your printer manufacturer includes.

Configuring an AppleTalk printer

Most printing is configured from a legacy program called the Chooser. The Chooser is (by default) kept in the Apple Menu Items folder of your Classic System folder. To launch the Chooser, you can either go to the Classic Menu Apple Menu Items Chooser, or, if you are already in the Classic System folder’s, Apple Menu Chooser. See Figure 17-14 for an example of what the Chooser looks like. The left side of the Chooser window displays an icon for each Classic printer driver that you have installed. After you select your printer driver on the left, the right side of the Chooser window displays a list of available printers or ports. You select the printer you want to use or the port to which the printer is connected. After selecting a printer, close the Chooser. Then, in your various Classic applications, make your Page Setup and Print selections.

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Figure 17-14: Use the Chooser to access printers in the Classic application environment.

Configuring an LPR printer

Not all printers or networks support AppleTalk; in some environments, you may find it important to configure one of your printers via IP address over a protocol called LPR. (LPR stands for Line Printer, and is a old Unix printer communication protocol) To configure an LPR printer in the Classic application environment you must use a program called the Desktop Printer Utility. This application is installed by default (in a Classic install) in the Utilities folder in your Applications (Mac OS 9) folder. To create an LPR printer, follow theses steps:

  1. Launch the Desktop Printer Utility. The New Desktop Printer dialog appears (see Figure 17-15).

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    Figure 17-15: Though unsupported, the main screen of the Desktop Printer Utility allows you to configure LPR- and USB-attached PostScript printers in the Classic application environment.

  2. Select: Printer (LPR) and click OK. Another dialog appears (see Figure 17-16). The top half of the dialog, Postscript Printer Description File, allows you to set the PPD for your printer, which contains information about the options and capability of the printer.

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    Figure 17-16: Click Change in the top half of the window to set the printer description file.

  3. Click Change in the Postscript Printer Description File section. A list of installed PPDs appears. You can select from this list. If you do not have the proper PPD file installed, check your printer manufacturer’s Web site, and install it into your Classic System Folder. In a pinch, however, you can choose to use the generic PPD; while it may not have all of the options your printer supports, it should at least allow you to get printing (see Figure 17-17).

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    Figure 17-17: Select the printer description that matches the printer you want to use. In a pinch, choose Generic.

  4. Click Change in the bottom half of the window under LPR Printer Selection. A dialog appears allowing you to enter the IP address and queue name (if there is one) for the printer and then click OK (see Figure 17-18).

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    Figure 17-18: It is very important to be certain of the IP address of your printer, so you can use the Verify button to check if you have entered a valid address.

  5. Click Create. The Printer Name dialog appears, and you are asked to name the printer (see Figure 17-19).

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    Figure 17-19: Names are important.

  6. Enter a name for the printer and click OK. Your printer is created.

Note

Although we just discussed using the Desktop Printer Utility, it is important to be aware that Desktop Printing as you know it from Mac OS 9 is nonfunctional. Because the Classic application environment doesn’t use the Mac OS 9 Finder, Classic Desktop Printers aren’t visible anymore, although you can access all of your desktop printers from the Print dialog box. Printers created using the Desktop Printer Utility are also not visible in the Chooser, and you cannot reconfigure a desktop printer after you create it. To delete a desktop printer, open the Desktop Printer Utility and go to File Delete. A Delete Printer dialog box will appear and prompt you to select from a list of configured printers allowing you to delete any that you no longer need.

Printing to a networked printer from Classic

Networked printers recognized by the Classic are PostScript printers, and they use the LaserWriter 8 printer driver. If you are unsure whether your printer supports Postscript, check your printer’s manual for more information.

To select your default printer, follow these steps:

  1. Launch the Classic application you want to use so that the Classic menu bar is at the top of your screen.

  2. Choose Apple Chooser. The Chooser will launch in the Classic application environment.

  3. Click the LaserWriter 8 driver. A list of printers appears on the right. (See Figure 17-14 for an example of a listing of printers.)

  4. Select your desired printer from the list on the right side of the Chooser. If you only have one printer on your network that supports Appletalk, you will only see one printer listed.

  5. Close the Chooser. Your printer is now selected as the default.

You can also access the Chooser from the Classic menu (if you have it enabled) under Apple Menu Items, and skip the first two steps.

Fortunately, the Apple LaserWriter 8 Print dialog box is almost as smart as the Mac OS X Print dialog box. While it won’t list all your printers in the Printer pop-up menu, it does list all your available LaserWriter-compatible printers, so you can switch between the LaserWriter-compatible printers there. The Print dialog box is accessible from within Classic applications from the File menu, and normally has a keyboard shortcut of Command-P.

Setting LaserWriter 8 Page Setup options

Selecting the Page Setup command for a printer using LaserWriter 8 presents a dialog box with settings for Page Attributes, which is very similar in function to the Mac OS X version in its choices although it looks different (see Figure 17-20). You usually find the Page Setup Command under the File menu of a Classic application.

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Figure 17-20: The LaserWriter 8 Page Setup allows you to format the page attributes for the specific printer you are printing to.

The Page Attributes options are almost identical to the Mac OS X choices, with the following exceptions:

  • Orientation provides only two choices — portrait or landscape. You cannot specify the leading edge for landscape documents.

  • Generic Printer is not available as a choice.

  • Scaling is limited to a range of 25% to 400%.

Due to Classic’s less-capable graphics engine and font support, you have fewer PostScript options than in OS X, as shown in Figure 17-21.The following options are available:

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Figure 17-21: The pull-down menu allows you to access the PostScript Options for LaserWriter 8 Page Setup.

  • Flip Horizontal/Flip Vertical: This option creates mirror images of your document. Your selected option appears in the illustration in the dialog box. Flip Horizontal flips the image right to left, which is useful if you are creating a film image on a Linotronic imagesetter for a transparency or if the pages have to be emulsion side down.

  • Invert Image: This option makes all the black parts of a page print white, and vice versa. You probably won’t have much use for this parlor trick unless you create film negatives on a slide printer that has no method of its own for creating negative images.

  • Substitute Fonts: This option substitutes PostScript fonts for any fixed-sized screen fonts for which no PostScript or TrueType equivalent is available. For example, Geneva becomes Helvetica, Monaco becomes Courier, and New York becomes Times. The one drawback of font substitution is that although the variable-size font is substituted for its fixed-sized cousin, the spacing of letters and words on a line does not change, and the printed results often are remarkably ugly. For the best results, do not use fixed-size fonts that lack TrueType or PostScript equivalents, and leave the Substitute Fonts option off.

  • Smooth Text: This option smoothes the jagged edges of fixed sizes that have no matching PostScript fonts or TrueType fonts. For best results, avoid such fonts, and leave the Smooth Text option off.

  • Smooth Graphics: This option smoothes the jagged edges of bitmap graphic images created with painting programs. Smoothing improves some images, but blurs the detail out of others. Try printing with Smooth Graphics set both ways, and go with the one that looks best to you. This option has no effect on graphics created with drawing programs, such as FreeHand and Illustrator.

  • Precision Bitmap Alignment: This option reduces the entire printed image to avoid minor distortions in bitmap graphics. The distortions occur because of the nature of the dot density of bitmap graphics. For example, 72 dpi (dots-per-inch), the standard screen-image size, does not divide evenly into 300 dpi, 400 dpi, or 600 dpi (the dot density of many laser printers). When you print to a 300-dpi printer, for example, turning on this option reduces page images by 4 percent, effectively printing them at 288 dpi (an even multiple of 72 dpi). The reductions align the bitmaps properly to produce crisper output.

  • Unlimited Downloadable Fonts: This option enables you to use more fonts than your printer’s memory can hold at one time. The printing software does this by removing fonts from the printer’s memory after use, making way for other fonts. Be aware that the constant downloading and flushing of font files takes time and, thus, slows printing. Of note is that EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) graphics using fonts that are not present elsewhere on the page do not print correctly because the printer substitutes Courier for those orphan fonts. If you see Courier in a graphic where you did not want it, make sure that this option is turned off.

Setting LaserWriter 8 print options

When you choose the Print command for a printer that uses the LaserWriter 8 driver, you see a dialog box with settings for the number of copies, page numbers to print, paper source, output destination, and more. You switch among several groups of options by choosing a group from the unlabeled pop-up menu near the top of the dialog box. Figure 17-22 illustrates the pop-up menu for switching among groups of options in the Print dialog box for LaserWriter 8.

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Figure 17-22: The LaserWriter 8 Print dialog box is similar to the Mac OS X print dialog box, but you can’t switch among all of your printers, only those that use the LaserWriter 8 PostScript driver.

You’ll notice that these print settings are almost identical to the choices described earlier for AppleTalk printers under Mac OS X. The differences are as follows:

  • Destination pop-up menu: This menu enables you to choose whether your output is sent to the printer or saved to disk. The ability to select the print job’s destination is similar in concept to the Output Options choice under Mac OS X, with the exceptions that the default save format is PostScript rather than PDF and that a variety of options is available in the Save as File panel. If you have the Acrobat Distiller software installed, you can select Acrobat PDF as the output format on the Save as File panel.

  • Save Settings: This feature applies only to the current printer and does not allow you to name the set. The last-used settings become the default settings for that printer.

  • Background Printing: This feature enables you to determine whether printing should function as a multitasking operation or whether all other Classic activity should be subordinate to the printing task.

  • Cover Page: This feature enables you to direct the printer to produce a cover page and, if so, whether it should print before or after the document. The cover page reports the document name, your user name, and when it was printed.

  • Font Settings: This option enables you to annotate your PostScript output with comments where font changes are made. It also lets you specify which fonts are downloaded.

  • Job Logging: This feature is the equivalent of the Error Handling choice under Mac OS X.

Managing the Classic printing queue

The PrintMonitor application handles printing of waiting print requests while you continue working with other applications. PrintMonitor opens in the background automatically whenever there are print requests in the PrintMonitor Documents folder (inside the System Folder), deletes each print request that it prints, and quits automatically when the PrintMonitor Documents folder is empty.

Some printers made by companies other than Apple come with their own applications for managing the queue of waiting print requests. For instructions on using one of these applications, check the documentation that came with your printer.

Viewing the print queue

While PrintMonitor is open in the background, you can make it the active application by clicking its icon in the Dock. You also can open it at any time by double-clicking its icon, which is located in the Extensions folder of Classic’s System Folder. Making PrintMonitor active or opening it displays its window. The PrintMonitor window identifies the print request that is printing, lists the print requests waiting to be printed, and displays the status of the current print request. Figure 17-23 shows the PrintMonitor window.

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Figure 17-23: View queued print requests from Classic applications in the PrintMonitor window.

PrintMonitor automatically hides its window when you switch to another application, but PrintMonitor remains open in the background as long as it has print requests to process.

Changing the printing order

PrintMonitor ordinarily processes print requests in chronological order, oldest first. You can change the order by dragging print requests in the PrintMonitor window. You drag a print request by its icon, not by its name or sequence number.

Scheduling printing requests

You can schedule when PrintMonitor processes a print request, or you can postpone a print request indefinitely. First, select the print request you want to schedule (by clicking it) in the PrintMonitor window. You can select the print request being printed or any print request waiting to be printed. Then click Set Print Time. Figure 17-24 shows the dialog in which you set a time and date for processing a print request or postpone it indefinitely.

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Figure 17-24: In a busy work environment when you need to print a 400-page document, it’s courteous to schedule it to begin after every one leaves so that it will be ready when you arrive in the morning.

A print request scheduled for later printing appears in PrintMonitor’s waiting list with an alarm-clock icon in place of a sequence number. A print request postponed indefinitely appears in the waiting list with a dash in place of a sequence number, and it will not be printed until you schedule a print time for it.

Stopping and starting printing

You can suspend all background printing by choosing Stop Printing from PrintMonitor’s File menu. Before PrintMonitor stops printing, it finishes the request currently printing. To resume printing, choose Resume Printing from the File menu.

Setting PrintMonitor preferences

PrintMonitor can notify you when something happens that requires your attention during background printing. For example, PrintMonitor can notify you when you need to manually feed paper for background printing. An alert box, a blinking PrintMonitor icon in the Classic menu bar, or both, can notify you. To specify how you want to be notified, use the Preferences command in PrintMonitor’s File menu.

You can also use the Preferences command to specify how you want to be notified about printing errors, such as PrintMonitor not being able to locate a printer that is supposed to print a print request. PrintMonitor can just display a diamond symbol next to its name in the Application menu at the right end of the menu bar, or it can display the symbol and blink its icon in the menu bar. It can also do both of those things plus display an alert. You can turn off everything except the diamond in the Application menu.

Note

Regardless of the notification settings that you make in PrintMonitor’s Preferences dialog box, you are always notified that PrintMonitor requires your attention by the PrintMonitor icon bouncing high out of the Dock.




Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
ISBN: 0764543997
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 290

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