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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:

PDD File Format API

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: I'm writing a library routine to convert a QuickDraw GX PDD file into our own format. I need to know the PDD file format in order to do this. Is it documented anywhere?

A: Apple has provided a complete API within GX to allow you to access all of the information within a PDD. These calls are described on pages 4-61 through 4-70 of the Advanced Printing Features chapter of Inside Macintosh: QuickDraw GX Printing.

You should only be using these calls to access to the information within the PDD.

For example, to get to the image and paper size of a particular page, you need to get to the job within the PDD. The job will reference the paper types and format(s) (which contain the page size, orientation, etc.). As another example, to access the job, you would need to open the PDD and get the job associated to the PDD. You can open the PDD by calling GXOpenPrintFile (see the sample code on page 4-29 for additional details) and call GXGetPrintFileJob to get the job associated with the PDD. Once you have the job, you can then access the format(s) associated with the job.

[Jun 01 1996]

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