Setting a Shared Print Info Object

You can set your instance of NSPrintInfo as the shared instance using the method setSharedPrintInfo:. You get the shared NSPrintInfo object using the sharedPrintInfo class method.

Saving Print Settings for an App

To reuse the print settings used the last time your app ran, record the print info object as an app preference each time the user prints something and then restore those settings when the app launches.

However, because the dictionary that stores an NSPrintInfo object’s print settings includes non-property list values, it is not a proper property list object. Therefore, it cannot be converted to a plist format and saved directly as a preference value. Instead, you need to use the NSKeyedArchiver (or NSArchiver) class method archivedDataWithRootObject: to encode the NSPrintInfo object as an NSData object, which can be stored in a property list or saved to a file.

To restore the NSPrintInfo object, reload the NSData object and then use the NSKeyedUnarchiver (or NSUnarchiver) class method unarchiveObjectWithData: to decode the NSPrintInfo information.

Saving Print Settings for a Document

In a document-based app, each NSDocument instance has its own print info object, which you can obtain by calling the printInfo method of NSDocument. The document initially uses a copy of the app’s shared print info object (unless you set one yourself). When the user makes changes in the Page Setup panel, the document’s print info object is automatically updated with the new print settings.

Because print settings are often document specific, you might want to save them. For example, a user may print a wide spreadsheet in landscape mode. That setting should be remembered each time the document is printed but should not be used for any other documents, which the user may prefer to print in portrait mode.Therefore, each document should have its own print info object that is saved with the document and used each time that particular document is printed. As before, you should encode the NSPrintInfo object into an NSData object. Then, you should write the data to the document’s file.