A
API police
I have recently had to take over support for printing in an application. I
didn't have a clue about this area a couple of weeks ago. However, now, I am
starting to form the distinct impression that most of the difficult
questions surrounding printing don't have anything to do with 'printing',
per se, at all. It seems there are many printer drivers out there that don't
actually drive printers. Instead, some clever programmer recognized that
almost all applications support printing, so why not write printer drivers
that output files formatted as HTML, or PDF or something? This way,
applications that weren't designed to produce HTML or PDF or whatever in the
first place will now have this ability.
This is pathological in my view. The application doesn't have any real
control over the output. And yet users somehow get it in their heads that
the application *should*. They request enhancements or customizations that
are impossible.
The correct way to modularize formatting support, I think, is illustrated by
the XEP rendering engine http://xep.xattic.com/xep/index.html for example.
Are there any trade articles or antipattern descriptions, or
patterns-and-practices guides, or Windows logo guidelines out there that
discourage this horrible practice of formatting via printer drivers?
didn't have a clue about this area a couple of weeks ago. However, now, I am
starting to form the distinct impression that most of the difficult
questions surrounding printing don't have anything to do with 'printing',
per se, at all. It seems there are many printer drivers out there that don't
actually drive printers. Instead, some clever programmer recognized that
almost all applications support printing, so why not write printer drivers
that output files formatted as HTML, or PDF or something? This way,
applications that weren't designed to produce HTML or PDF or whatever in the
first place will now have this ability.
This is pathological in my view. The application doesn't have any real
control over the output. And yet users somehow get it in their heads that
the application *should*. They request enhancements or customizations that
are impossible.
The correct way to modularize formatting support, I think, is illustrated by
the XEP rendering engine http://xep.xattic.com/xep/index.html for example.
Are there any trade articles or antipattern descriptions, or
patterns-and-practices guides, or Windows logo guidelines out there that
discourage this horrible practice of formatting via printer drivers?