wxWidgets/docs/doxygen/overviews/unixprinting.h

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// Name:        unixprinting
// Purpose:     topic overview
// Author:      wxWidgets team
// RCS-ID:      $Id$
// Licence:     wxWindows license
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/*!

 @page unixprinting_overview Printing under Unix (GTK+)

 Printing under Unix has always been a cause of problems as Unix
 does not provide a standard way to display text and graphics
 on screen and print it to a printer using the same application
 programming interface - instead, displaying on screen is done
 via the X11 library while printing has to be done with using
 PostScript commands. This was particularly difficult to handle
 for the case of fonts with the result that only a selected
 number of application could offer WYSIWYG under Unix. Equally,
 wxWidgets offered its own printing implementation using PostScript
 which never really matched the screen display.
 Starting with version 2.8.X, the GNOME project provides printing
 support through the libgnomeprint and libgnomeprintui libraries
 by which especially the font problem is mostly solved. Beginning
 with version 2.5.4, the GTK+ port of wxWidgets can make use of
 these libraries if wxWidgets is configured accordingly and if the
 libraries are present. You need to configure wxWidgets with the
 @e configure --with-gnomeprint switch and your application will
 then search for the GNOME print libraries at runtime. If they
 are found, printing will be done through these, otherwise the
 application will fall back to the old PostScript printing code.
 Note that the application will not require the GNOME print libraries
 to be installed in order to run (there will be no dependency on
 these libraries).
 In version GTK+ 2.10, support for printing has been added to GTK+
 itself. Beginning with version wxWidgets 2.9.X, the GTK+ port of
 wxWidgets can make use of this feature
 if wxWidgets is configured accordingly and if the GTK+ version is = 2.10.
 You need to configure wxWidgets with the @e configure --with-gtkprint
 switch and your application will then search for the GTK+ print support
 at runtime. If it is found, printing will be done through GTK+, otherwise the
 application will fall back to GNOME printing support if it is available or,
 if it isn't, to the old PostScript printing code.
 Note that the application will not require a GTK+ version = 2.10
 to be installed in order to run (there will be no dependency on
 this version).

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