Printing API

The X Window System has a printing mechanism which is unfortunately not in very wide use. A reason for this could be the fact that the documentation for this mechanism refers to a widget set which was less available than its documentation.

The LessTif core team has started to implement two modules which, together, offer full printing functionality : XmPrint and DtPrint.

These API's are demonstrated by the new printing functionality in Xinvest. Note several constraints however :

unreleased version of Xinvest from its CVS
requires a bug-free version of Xprt, see below.
Xprt needs to be configured right for this to work. This is documented here.

What are XmPrint and DtPrint ?

XmPrint is our abbreviation for a module in Motif that implements support for the X Printing Mechanism. DtPrint is our abbreviation for a similar modules in CDE.

LessTif now contains simple implementations of both, which makes it possible to write applications that use this standardised and (fairly) high level mechanism to print in a device independent manner.

As our experience in getting Xinvest to use this technology showed, all is not always as simple as it seems. In retroscpect, the changes that need to be made to an application to get it to print are relatively minor. Their complexity grows as the application is more graphics intensive, but even for Xinvest (which is graphics intensive) the changes were not hard to implement.

How to Xp, XmPrint, and DtPrint cooperate ?

An overview by the X Consortium on how these cooperate is in their distributions in file

  xc/programs/Xserver/XpConfig/README

We have provided a copy of the X11R6.6 version here.

Which version of Xprt is known to work ?

Under construction

Roland Mainz is trying to get Mozilla to work with Xprt, and to get a decent Xprt server available. Find his work here.

Xprt configuration

Under construction in file here.