Technical Q&As


GXPD 35 - Incorrect Paper Size with QuickDraw GX 1.1.2 (1-Aug-95)


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 Documents formatted for US Letter that are created with non-QuickDraw GX drivers open as A4 in QuickDraw GX 1.1.2. This did not occur with QuickDraw GX 1.0. How we can avoid this problem?

A In QuickDraw GX 1.0, there were no custom paper types. When we added custom paper types in QuickDraw GX 1.1.1, we created the problem that you are encountering. There are several possible workarounds that you can implement until this problem can be fixed (in QuickDraw GX 1.2):

1. Default the paper type to US Letter, and have the user make corrections in your page-setup dialog.

2. Force users to choose the paper type before printing.

3. When your application is set up on a system that has QuickDraw GX installed, warn the user of the paper-type problem.

4. When your application is set up on a system that has QuickDraw GX installed, inform the user that they should remove all custom paper types from the Extensions folder (3-hole punch, letterhead, and stationery), and re-save the documents.

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