Section 10.1. Print System Overview

10.1. Print System Overview

Mac OS X's printing system makes use of the following technologies:

• Quartz and PDF for creating print-ready output from applications.

• Common Unix Printing System (CUPS ) for managing printers, printer drivers, and print jobs. CUPS also accepts print jobs using the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). The CUPS project can be found on the Internet at http://www.cups.org.

• Samba 3 for connecting to Windows SMB-based printers and for receiving print jobs from Windows clients. Additional information on Samba can be found at http://www.samba.org.

• Open Directory for locating printers with LDAP, NetInfo, Bonjour, and SMB.

Generally the printers that you will use come in two varieties:

Locally attached

Printers that are directly connected to your machine via USB or FireWire. You can always access these printers and, if you choose, share them with other computers on the network by going to System Preferences Print & Fax Sharing and enabling it.

Network accessible

Printers that are either connected directly to the network (such as many laser printers in office environments) or are attached to other computers that have enabled printer sharing. Because Mac OS X understands a variety of network protocols, it can connect to printers hosted by Windows- and Unix-based machines as well as by other Macs.

In addition, there are two virtual types of printers that are built into the print system:

Fax

From any print dialog, you can press the Fax button and fax a document with the modem built into your Mac.

PDF

Instead of printing to hardcopy, you can easily generate PDF files.