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X Version 11

Release 6.4

Overview

X Print Service is an X extension that allows X imaging to non-display devices such as printers and fax
machines. The core of the X Print Service is the X Print Server.

Applications that require printing operations can make a connection to X Print Server and list the available
printers using the PrintGetPrinterList request. After selecting a printer, an application must create and set
a print context using the PrintCreateContext and PrintSetContext requests.

The "print context" is a fundamental X Print Service concept. A print context:

Contains a printer's default capabilities

Contains a printer's range of capabilities

Maintains the state of the settings on a printer

Maintains the state of rendering against a printer

Maintains rendered output

A print context also affects how the DDX driver generates its page description language (PDL), and how the
PDL is submitted to a spooler. It may affect fonts and other elements in the DDX layer of the X Print Server.

Printer capabilities are defined by attribute pools within the print context. They contain information related
to a context's server, printer, job, document, and page options. PrintGetAttributes and PrintSetAttributes
are used to access and modify attribute pools.

PrintStartJob

and PrintEndJob are used to delineate print jobs. A "job" is a collection of documents

delineated by PrintStartDoc and PrintEndDoc. Each document is, in turn, a collection of "pages". Upon
completion the server sends any resulting PDL to a print spooler, or makes it available for retrieval by an
application.