Re: Printing issues

FROM : billmonk
DATE : Sat Apr 23 03:16:48 2005

> won't know what different receipt printer manufacturers may be
> calling their custom receipt page sizes.


There's no PPD, but a hexdump of the StarPM file (inside the
StarPM.plugin bundle) reveals interesting names such as
"104mm x Long Receipt" and "72mm x Long Receipt" etc.

Tiger may change things, but NSPrinter doc currently says "An NSPrinter
object describes a printer’s capabilities as defined in its PPD file".
If there's no PPD, and you want fine control, I think you may be stuck
using Carbon Print Manager, or the print dialogs (which are implemented
in Carbon PM).

The code below enumerates all printers and their paper names/sizes in
Carbon, then tries to do a few things with the info in Cocoa.

On printers here, Carbon reports accurate sizes for many papers for
which [printer pageSizeForPaper: paperName] often return a zero size.
The method is documented to return sizes for paper names **in the
PPD**. "Possible values for paperName are contained in the printer’s
PPD file...Returns a zero size if paperName is not recognized, or its
entry in the PPD cannot be parsed."

This may explain why setting the receipt pagesize doesn't
programmatically doesn't work right. The print dialogs are built on top
of Carbon and are correctly extracting the paper names/sizes from the
drivers, just as the code below does. But when trying to do the same
thing  programmatically in Cocoa, some methods silently fail because
there's no PPD, so you get a default paper size which is too big for
the receipt printer, and it gets scaled down to 72mm wide...

Just to take a couple of examples from a run here, (HP printer using
PDE plugin files like the Star printers, no PPD)
3x5 Index
Carbon says it's 216.000000 x 360.000000
[printer pageSizeForPaper:paperName] says it's 0 x 0
[sharedPrintInfo paperSize] says it's 612.000000 x 792.000000 // close
to Letter

#10 Envelope
Carbon says  297.000000 x 684.000000
printer pageSizeForPaper:paperName] says 0 x 0
[sharedPrintInfo paperSize]  says 612 x 792.000000  // close to Letter

Other small papers on 5 different printers here show the same pattern,
with an accurate size from Carbon but a bogus "letter" size when the
paper name is handed to Cocoa. I'm no Cocoa printing expert. But this
looks like it might explain a lot about the receipt printing problems.

//
// Get name and size of every paper on every printer;
// Use the info in a few Cocoa methods and log the results.
//
OSErr EnumeratePaperInfo(void)
{
PMPrintSession printSession;
OSStatus err = PMCreateSession( &printSession );

// get a CFArray of PMPrinter structs
CFArrayRef    printerList;

err = PMServerCreatePrinterList( kPMServerLocal,
                                   &printerList);
   
if ( err == noErr ) {
   int i;
   int numPrinters = CFArrayGetCount(printerList);
   for ( i = 0; i < numPrinters; i++ ) {
       // get CFArray of PMPaper, a list of papers available for this
printer.
       CFArrayRef paperList;
       PMPrinter thisPrinter = (PMPrinter)CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(
printerList, i );
       
       NSLog( @"=========================Printer: %@==============",
PMPrinterGetName( thisPrinter ) );
       
       err = PMPrinterGetPaperList( thisPrinter, &paperList);  // requires
10.3 or better
       if ( err == noErr ) {
           int j;
           int numPapers = CFArrayGetCount(paperList);
           for ( j = 0; j < numPapers; j++ ) {
               
               PMPaper thisPaper =  (PMPaper)CFArrayGetValueAtIndex( paperList, j
);
               
               CFStringRef paperName;
               err = PMPaperGetName( thisPaper, &paperName );
                   
               double paperHeight;
               err = PMPaperGetHeight( thisPaper, &paperHeight );
               
               double paperWidth;
               err = PMPaperGetWidth( thisPaper, &paperWidth );
       
               NSLog( @"\tPaper name: %@", (NSString *)paperName );
               NSLog( @"\t\twidth  = %f", paperWidth );
               NSLog( @"\t\theight = %f", paperHeight );

               // try to use the printer and paper size found via Carbon to do
some things in Cocoa
               // and compare the results.
               NSPrinter *printer = [NSPrinter printerWithName: (NSString
*)PMPrinterGetName( thisPrinter )];
               NSSize size = [printer pageSizeForPaper: (NSString *)paperName];
               // size should match that found via Carbon, but is often and empty
rect
               if ( size.width != 0 || size.height != 0 ) {
                   NSLog( @"\t\t\t[printer imageRectForPaper:] says width = %f,
height = %f", size.width, size.height );
               } else {
                   NSLog( @"\t\t\t[printer imageRectForPaper:] returned empty size
for this paper.");
               }

                 // setPaperName: should recalc the print rect to match new paper.
               // docs: "This method may change either the size or orientation for
consistency."                [[NSPrintInfo sharedPrintInfo] setPaperName:(NSString
*)paperName];
               size = [[NSPrintInfo sharedPrintInfo] paperSize];                 // paperSize
frequently returns a much different size from the correct size Carbon
reports.
               if ( size.width != 0 || size.height != 0 ) {
                   NSLog( @"\t\t\t[sharedPrintInfo paperSize:] says width = %f,
height = %f", size.width, size.height );
               } else {
                   NSLog( @"\t\t\t[sharedPrintInfo paperSize:] returned empty size
for this paper.");
               }
           
               
               NSLog( @"\n" );
               }
           }
       }
   }
}