Design Integration Laboratory

Architecture 222 & 410/510/610

Printing Your Work

Overview

Printing is often the final step in creating a project with digital media. If you understand the process and plan with reasonable care, printing will usually go smoothly, and provide a satisfying conclusion to your efforts.

There are three simple steps to control the entire process of printing from a Macitosh application. It is a good idea to go through all three of these steps whenever you are using a shared printer, as in the DCL, because there's no telling how the computer was left by whoever used it before you.

In the controlled environment of your own Macintosh, you can sometimes get away with skipping the first or second step -- but beware, because you will be responsible for any prints you generate on charged printers, whether you printed on purpose or not.

Set the Printer to be used, using the Chooser .

Open the Chooser, by using the Apple menu Chooser command. Then click in the top left area of the Chooser window to select a driver, click in the lower left area to select a network zone, and then click in the right-hand area to select the printer itself.
For instance, to make a black-and-white print on a LaserWriter in the DCL, you would click "LaserWriter 8" for the driver, then "AAA Lawrence" for the zone, and finally something like "283La LW Pro 810" for the printer.
After you've selected the printer, click in the little close box in the left corner of the Chooser window title bar to put the Chooser away.

Set the Paper Details, using the File menu Page Setup... command.

It is a good idea to open the Page Setup dialog box just to make sure you have the right paper size selected. This is also where you go to select larger paper, or to print sideways -- known as "landscape format" -- on any size paper.

Set Color Options, and then Send the Print Job, using the File menu Print... command.

First, open the Print dialog box, and click on the Options button to set the color balance. This is very important for getting good graphics printing (unless you like muddy gray unbalanced prints).

Then click OK to close the Options dialog box and go back to the Print dialog box. Double-check check the number of copies and the number of pages you've asked for, and finally click the Print button to actually do it.

It is a good idea to get in the habt of specifying to print from page "1 to 1", even though it may seem obvious. Later on, specifying that you only want one copy of one page can save you a lot with programs that might print many pages if there is a setup mistake.

After you click Print, the Macintosh will first save the print job to a special temporary file on disk, so you can go on to other work during the rest of the process. Then, as soon as it can actually connect to the printer (which might take a while with a busy networked printer), the print job is automatically sent chunk by chunk to the printer by the Print Monitor application.

You can check on the progess of this step by pulling down the Application menu to the Print Monitor application. Print Monitor will also blink it icon in the menu bar and give you messages if something goes wrong during printing. Finally, when the printer is done rendering the image internally and putting it onto paper, your print will emerge in all its glory.

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http://www.dil.uoregon.edu/courses/96.4/a222.f96/a222.f96.printing.html - Posted 96.10.10 KMM, rev. 96.10.10