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Important: This document is part of the Legacy section of the ADC Reference Library. This information should not be used for new development.

Current information on this Reference Library topic can be found here:

PostScript Color Printing Bug

Important for all Apple Printing and Graphics Developers:

The information in this Technical Q & A is still relevant up to and including Mac OS 7.6 with QuickDraw GX 1.1.5. Beginning with the release of Mac OS 8.0, however, Apple plans to deliver a system which incorporates QuickDraw GX graphics and typography only. QuickDraw GX printer drivers and GX printing extensions will not be supported in Mac OS 8.0 or in future Mac OS releases. Apple's goal is to simplify the user experience of printing by unifying the Macintosh graphic and printing architectures and standardizing on the classic Printing Manager.

For details on Apple's official announcement, refer to </dev/technotes/gxchange.html>

Q: n my app, I'm creating a page that contains a line of single layer text shapes, with each word being a different color. The page displays correctly when it's opened in SimpleText, but shows a bug when it's printed to a PostScript printer: each line prints with one color instead of each word being a different color. Any ideas?

A: This is a bug in the GX source code. This bug only occurs with single layer text shapes that have a nil style in their face layer. There is a workaround. Do this anytime you do a one layer text face except for italicizing text: this workaround slows down the italic drawing but speeds up all other cases.

Create a "generic" style object (via GXNewStyle) to replace the nil style. Set the text size to 1.0 (important) and pen=0 in the style. The other fields are irrelevant to this fix. The main points are text and pen size. Set your style to this "generic" style and the problem will disappear.

[May 14 1996]

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