Suppressing the Print Panel

By default, an NSPrintOperation object object displays a Print panel allowing the user to select printing options, such as number of copies to print and range of pages to print. After the user chooses options for the first time, you might want to offer the user the ability to bypass the Print panel and print immediately using the previous print settings.

You can suppress the display of the Print panel by sending setShowsPrintPanel: with a NO argument to the NSPrintOperation object before running the operation.

However, make sure that any non-default settings in the NSPrintPanel object that would normally be selected from an NSPrintPanel object are set to reasonable values—a copy of an NSPrintPanel object used in a previous print job will have the correct values, as shown in Listing 5-1.

Listing 5-1  Ensuring the print panel object has reasonable values

// Invoked in response to the standard "Print..." menu command

- (void)print:(id)sender {

    NSPrintOperation *op = [NSPrintOperation printOperationWithView:self

                                    printInfo:[self printInfo]];

    if ( [op runOperation] )

        [self setPrintInfo:[op printInfo]];

}

// Invoked in response to a custom "Print Now" menu command

- (void)printWithNoPanel:(id)sender {

    NSPrintOperation *op;

    op = [NSPrintOperation printOperationWithView:self

                printInfo:[self printInfo]];

    [op setShowsPrintPanel:NO];

    [op runOperation];

}

Modifying the Print Panel

By default, an NSPrintOperation object displays a standard Print panel. If you need to add some app-specific options, you can add an accessory view. You have the option of loading the accessory view from a nib file or creating it programmatically.

To add a custom accessory view to the standard Print panel, follow these steps:

1. Use Interface Builder in Xcode to create an accessory view, placing controls that correspond to your app-specific print settings. (For example, see Figure 5-1.)

   The accessory view displays when the user chooses your app’s name in the pane-selection pop-up menu in the Print panel. The panel automatically resizes in the vertical direction to accommodate the view you add. If your view is too wide, the content will be clipped. If possible, you should make your accessory view the same size as the standard views in the panel

2. Subclass NSViewController to create a print panel accessory view controller.

3. Implement the required protocol method localizedSummaryItems.

4. (Optional) Implement keyPathsForValuesAffectingPreview.

5. Get the print panel associated with the print operation.

6. Call the addAccessoryController: method to add the accessory view to the print panel.

7. Run the print operation to trigger showing the Print panel

When you run a print operation, your accessory view is available for viewing in the Print panel. Figure 5-2 shows the accessory view for the TextEdit sample code project. Figure 5-1 shows the view as it appears in Interface Builder.

If you need to make more extensive changes to the Print panel, you can subclass NSPrintPanel. You tell NSPrintOperation to use your custom subclass instead of the default panel using its setPrintPanel: method.

- (void)print:(id)sender {

    NSPrintOperation *op;

    MyPrintPanel *myPanel = [[MyPrintPanel alloc] init];

    op = [NSPrintOperation printOperationWithView:self];

    [op setPrintPanel:myPanel];

    [op runOperation];

    [myPanel release];

}