Cocoa printing – On the surface it is easy

I had to add printing to an application I’m working on so that users can print out web pages for the built in web browser. Turns out that this only took about 20 minutes to implement. Cocoa is nice that way, but then today I needed to change the title of the printout (used in Preview, in the Job list for the printer and the default name when saving) as the name it picked up was the window name which didn’t make a lot of sense. So, after much searching and realizing that I’d need to subclass some need WebKit object which was unfeasible, I took a look at categories. For the most part, I understand categories, but in this case, I added a category to NSView called printJobTitle, shoved in what I wanted if it was a WebHTMLView class, otherwise use the window’s title and amazingly this worked. I’m not exactly sure how as I’ve found at least one other category for NSView that also has printJobTitle in it. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth; it works.

Note to Apple, please let me specify a print job title in the NSPrintInfo and override what is taken from the NSView. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has had to do this.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.