WWDC2004 Session 212

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
okay good morning welcome to the 2004
edition of the
in session my name is Paul downed old
technology manager evangelist for
printing as always we've got a lot of
good stuff though let's get started
we're going to begin by looking at how
far we've come and where we're going in
tiger with a printing system see how
we're doing in making things easy for
you making things easy for the customer
will start ways kind of report card on
where we stand with compatibility mainly
with printers how many you can connect
to the mac ease of youth functionality
and not just functionality for the user
all the bells and whistles in the print
dialog for the AP is that you used to
interact for the printing system
compatibility on a start with a little
bit of audience participation who use
one of these printers okay so I know how
many people are at least 30 years old or
older if you don't know that's an image
writer printer that's actually an image
writer too image writer ship first just
over 20 years ago and this is the image
writer that I've got in my office I
don't know how old it is but it works I
went to line xorg downloaded the film
attic driver and I can print to it from
10 so pretty good and anybody here who
played a part in writing that driver
thank you very much I don't use it a lot
it's not very fast 144 DPI in best modes
so not great but it works Panther
shipped with little over 120 PPD's for
postscript printers from the well-known
vendors close on 300 old-style so-called
polgar drivers from HP epson canon
lexmark and we got the imprint package
in Panther that supports over 250
printers so we're doing pretty well
we're planning on building on that list
the tiger so you can expect that out of
box by call ship is even more drivers
and we're working closely with the
printer vendors to make sure that
happens so we think we're doing pretty
well they're on making sure
that any user of Mac OS can complete it
pretty much to any printer to recognize
network etc on the ease of youth topics
making things easy for the everyday
users professional user thought we'd
look at four things that most people do
from one time or another discovering
printers setting up cues sharing those
printers and interacting with the
printers through the print dialog and
getting them getting access to all the
printed features if you remember that
old image really remember that users
used to have to think about the driver
before they venture print have typically
drive and then the printer and then in
Mac OS 10 when we when we came out with
print center we decided that it was
better for the user to think about the
way the printer was connected to the mac
so they picked the connection type USB
rendezvous etc and then pick the printer
and we had these browsers that were
loaded by Prince Center printer setup
utility that would provide support for
those various connection types well the
only problem with that is it took a
little while to find those browsers load
them call them and get the list of
printers and just a little movie I
caught on my powerbook back in my office
you can see it would take about on a
good day maybe about 10 or more seconds
to load all those browsers so we weren't
too thrilled with that now coming up
neck is what we've done on tiger and we
don't have a network of printers and the
moscone so i'm going to show you another
movie that i thought back to gain in my
office as you can see if you watch this
what we've done in Tiger is we've
combined a predator combo browser for
all the standard connection types and as
you can see here you can sort by name
you can sort by connection type you can
filter you see there so it's a lot
faster basically there's no latency
between clicking the Add button and
seeing a list of printers having done
that you can join set up cues
very easily there's a separate rows as
an icon so you can go and set up your IP
French of course you can't browse for
those so easily and they're still access
to the third party cuts and browses so
we try to cover all the bases and
overall we think there's a user
experience is going to be a lot better
or the folks you have to go out on the
network for example to set up the
printer queue that said of course you
know that even the far back is tumor
10.1 we had also curation for some
connection types so we're still
expecting the user not even have to
worry about printer setup utility for
things like USB and rendezvous next
thing that people do a lot is they share
their printers or they share their
printer queues and we introduce that
when we integrated cups into the
printing system back in 10 point to the
UI thread though gave you just one
choice share all your printers or none
of them and that was okay if you just
had one printer queue for failure to
rekt make you a see printer it wasn't so
good if you had a lot of printer queue
set up on your mac especially for
network printers so in Tiger you can
you'll see this when you get when you
install tiger we now have via a print
and fax this impression the ability to
list the printers you've got the direct
connect printers you've got and
selectively share them however if you
spot a little bit of red text on that
you'll see that we haven't quite hooks
the UI up to the underlying
functionality so a future Tiger seeds
will have that working so i think users
will appreciate that facility just to
share you know the printer that you are
happy to share and that expensive
princess if you like to use all the time
with the expensive inks and papers you
can keep that yourself another thing
that people do especially in the world
where people work with net worth laser
printers are typically posted printers
when they when they discover the french
on the cute on the network they have to
configure it they basically have to tell
the house computer about the printers
capability now it doesn't usually apply
if you've got an apple to a printer
because we can query the printer and get
back it configure
but for an IP printer you have to do it
manually and this little movie again
shows the steps involved in that typing
in the address of the printer setting up
the cube and has been having done that
you have to go to the installable
options panel and tell the host computer
that you've got that extra paper tray
install though you've got the duplexer
installed etc so we're expecting a
little more for users and should be
required just let that move you complete
so this is what we're planning to do in
tigra you won't see this when you
install the the seeds that you have but
we are planning and we've already got
some coding place to support SNMP is
part of the printing system and with
SNMP queries embedded in a PPD file we
should be able to for an IP printer you
should be able to find out how its
configured and do that for automatic
setup that we do already for apples or
printers so again that will make life a
little easier for the user and we'll
also be using SNMP to monitor printer
status during the execution of a print
shop so for your LCR printers you will
see more about what's going on but
wearing the mid during French oh ok one
more thing in terms of ease of use is
the functionality we provide all the
bells and whistles in the print dialog
and what we did in Panther as you
probably all know we added a bunch more
panels a lot of new features things like
printing cover pages being able to
schedule when you print doing reverse
order printing and printing cards even
sheets etc that was all well and good
but it resulted in a lot of panels in
the print dialog so we've decided to go
to the cleanup and add and still add
some functionality to the print dialog
and to show you that we have our
fearless demo guy here Allen back which
is going to come up in live shows a
tiger print dialog
demo one screen I'm just going to go
ahead and bring up one of my favorite
test document King Tut to screams the
print dialog and here you'll see that we
have somewhat rearrange these buttons
down here we've added a PDF button pop
down command widget here that basically
combines the two save as PDF and they
say that's postscript so we have gotten
rid of the output Paul said we got rid
of the output options TDE so we can just
go here and it was just bringing up save
us PostScript we'll just bring up the
save as dialog another thing we have
done is we have a revamp the summary pde
to make it more useful so you can see
the information that you want and
hydration you really don't care about
like I really don't care about copies
pages but I always really want to know
what my layout is so one nice thing
about this is it will remember what what
PDE summaries you have opened on a
per-user basis so next time I bring up
the print dialog and show the summary it
will still come up in this in this
configuration so if we just go back to
let's go back to the layout let's change
it to end up with a double sin line
border and go to the summary pain it
shows that okay I'm now doing the double
thin line border the other thing that we
have done is we have added because the
paper handling pde we've added selecting
the gestation paper size basically
allows us to scale to fit to a certain
paper size that you know that certainly
in the printer so if we do this we know
it's us letter but we know that say we
only have envelopes in the printer so
what it will do is
Gail to fit he says this is our envelope
with the King tat scale to fit so we
don't get the clipping we don't lose
kind of a quick way of getting a
printout if you don't have the correct
paper size so that's basically all that
has changed in the print dialog of thing
everything else is basically the same
right now not saying it won't change
further by the time Tiger shift but this
is what was currently planned so let's
move on to print center here I have one
printer here oh we actually do have a
rendezvous printer so if I could just
click the Add button and we actually is
one round of your printer laserjet for
200 I will select it you'll see that
it's gathering information from the
printer once it finds it and it's using
then we select that PPP automatically we
just go ahead and add it if we wanted to
and that's the change to printer setup
utility now if you just go to the
printer proxy one thing we have added is
we have added another tab to show your
completed jobs it will tell you the knit
you know the name of the job how it
finished whether it be you finish
normally cancel or an error and it will
tell you when it completed I think so
tell i was doing this final preparation
of this demo a little bit earlier this
morning a another thing that we have
heard from you is from you and other
users is they want to a held job you
want to resume resume on a certain page
so we've added that if you go to the
jobs menu you can go to resume on page
and you can enter any page number that
you want printer isn't really here so
I'm just going to go ahead and stop the
job the other thing you can do with that
is you can we've actually added another
two of our widget for it resume on page
there hold and then redo it resume my
page as well and that's it thanks Alan
so just a quick summary things that
we've done so far in Tiger we've
provided that integrated printer browser
as you saw we've got or will have
through the fine control of which
Quintus you share it's an invisible is
going in scales of it in the print
dialog improved functionality in the
desktop printers and we're off to be
working on more the point I want to make
here is please test this stuff you know
you've got the first you first build the
tiger you'll be getting more of course
and whether you're writing applications
or writing printer drivers or printing
utilities whatever I mean please start
testing as soon as you can obviously the
overall quality of triangles and a lot
on your contributions and I'm sure it's
really knows how to file bugs please
feel welcome change gears a little bit
now we're going to talk about api's and
for anybody writing applications it's
tough going to be relevant to you one
thing that you might have noticed over
the last few years we've had some API
creep in the printing system because
these two header files p.m. application
p.m. core provides most of the low-level
API for printing most of those api's
they used internally by the various
cocoa print method and as you can see we
were up over 200 api's by obviously
incrementally improving the printing
system we added things like p.m. printer
AP is the PM workflow api's etc over the
last few releases we thought that we
were a little too heavy on AP is so what
we've done for Tiger free deprecated 80
of them
so if you are using any of the old non
session API only if the legacy
laserwriter rate printing api's any of
the AP is that we're trying to write
things out to do with you know the old
print record you will get when you try
to compile your code on tiger you'll get
very polite warning that you're using a
deprecated API so that's your signal to
go into the header file and if you can
see from a comment up here will tell you
for everything one of those 80
deprecated api's which one or ones you
should be using instead deprecated
doesn't mean your code will crash it
just means that you'll get a warning at
compile time and the strong
encouragement from Apple to move on to
the recommended API so please stop
updating your application printing code
as soon as you can and follow those
guidelines hey and then I want to take a
few minutes to talk about the API so
that I hope most of you are using
directly or indirectly indirectly if
using cocoa to print and we're going to
start by looking at a bunch of AP is
that usually worth calling before you
actually invoke the print dialog so
after the print menu thing clicked these
are some of the api's you should be
using and will explain why one of the
things we we recommend is that every
time you hit the print menu you start a
new print session and you should create
new print settings and default them and
the reason for that is that the user
every time you go to print document
starts off with the default sensible set
of values for the various print settings
and shown here is after you called
default print settings obviously reset
copies back to one the page range etc
and better that than reusing the print
settings object and have inherited your
life settings from the last print job to
the next one users can get confused or
annoyed when that happens so try to use
that call another one to call if you're
printing multiple pay
documents at the page range that
explicitly tells our copies and pages
print panel what the values page range
is stop the user typing in you know
print to page 99 if you've only got a 10
page document so pretty obvious why you
should use that enable printer preset
not for everybody but if your
application prints images a good idea to
enable the driver installed preset for
the printer and presets if you are not
familiar with that the ones that bundled
with drivers are recommended
combinations of things like paper types
and resolution settings and users will
be you know better off using the ones
defined by the printer manufacturers and
going into the various panels and
setting ones that they think are
appropriate this is a convenient way of
picking ones that will yield good
results on paper so you can do this by
calling if you're a carbon at enable
printer preset there's a API to disable
in this you need to cocoa just ask and
do this as a job style hint that you can
apply to the NS print panel to do the
same thing so if you're printing images
an able to drive a preset setting the
job name is another good thing to do and
a sprint operation does this for you
automatically so you don't have to worry
about it if your cocoa app well of
course you need to have a meaningful
window title carbon app should call this
API this is actually a new API in Tiger
but there's an equivalent API for pan
through and Jaguar it's p.m. Prince
session that's job named EF string so
there's an API to do that basically
anything's better than seeing untitled
in a list of printers the TC eyes are in
the desktop printer list or on the cups
web page or in all for example when you
print to this you want to be primed with
a reasonable file name and the other
thing is with screenshots here shows if
you're looking at print server it's
useful to see what's being printed and
so try to call that API
another one that we've been talking
about for years if you're a carbon after
you need to be doing this well you
should be doing this if you can display
multiple windows you see display your
friend dialogues as the sheet everybody
knows then which window they are
actually printing and this is the easy
one I don't really have to say anything
about this bring up the print dialog
having done all that preparation work
after the print dialog being dismissed
as a few api's you might want to be
calling if your application has a panel
or panels for the print dialog you
probably want to get the settings that
the user selected in order to control
the way you draw the content and when
you get into the print loop so this is
the API you can use for that and the
sample code explaining that but we've
added a new API in tiger this is the 1pm
print settings get value this enables
you is an application to get any print
settings values so since abuses but you
can see what the drivers pdes have added
to the print settings you probably don't
want to be forcing the way you draw your
document according to that but you can
get any setting out of the print
settings object after the print dialog
has been dismissed for ignore for
example the printer utility might want
to do that to get the media type
selected so if it's printing a test page
it knows whether it's printing a test
page on plain paper or photo glossy for
example there's a corresponding API p.m.
print settings that value that you can
also use in tiger so now to the print
loop I'm sure everybody heard this week
that quick draws being deprecated and
think of the session tomorrow on moving
to courts 2d so if you haven't already
heard all the good stuff about courts
duty please go to that session I think
it's somebody have to remind me tomorrow
afternoon two o'clock thank you so this
is the old print loop drawing everything
with quick draw and that'll still work
but obviously we want you to move on
maybe by now you've already started to
take it
of course 2d and for a while now we've
had these api is enabling you to draw
some content on your pages in a core
graphics context and that begin and CD
contacts API enables you to do that
effectively to make quick draw and poor
graphic and remember the coordinate
spaces are different so that was
something that hopefully you've been
doing there's an even better way in
Tiger to explicitly tell the printing
system you're going to exclusively use
core graphics calls to draw everything
on the page and this API begins cg
document tells the printing system you
know you've moved to course 2d you can
do the same thing on Panther or jocular
but not with this API because it wasn't
available then but you can still set up
a core graphics context and draw up
singing but we tigers it's just a more
convenient way to do that with this new
API and talking about that I have to
plug a unified PDF imaging model this is
applied lipstick from last year I'm not
going to go into a lot of details I'm
sure everybody knows by now that if you
use the recommended PDF print are you
get a lot of benefits Print Preview you
get to take advantage of the PDF
workflow and all the other things
mentioned here if for whatever reason
you are obliged to generate PostScript
code and then our recommendation this is
the same recommendation we had last year
is to use a job submission API so don't
don't use the printing system to
generate a poster print job generates
the poster printer of yourself and then
use the job submission API so send that
post good job directly to the print view
I'm mentioning here on the bottom bullet
item to new api's that may remove one of
the excuses you had for using the legacy
laserwriter a printer you can now use
these api to generate your post script
font data and put them into your post
clip file that you will submit with the
job commission API
I should mention that not all
applications choose to use the print
dialog when you go to print some
applications have their own UI some
applications or tools though neither UI
and they certainly don't want to see the
spooling dialogue displayed so there's
the so-called no dialogue variants of
the print loop API and you can see them
here at the old way of course now that
you're moving to cause 2d there's a
corresponding API to the begin cg
document there's a CG document no
dialogue which will tell the printing
system I'm going through the print loop
that I don't want to do the schooling
dialogue but and this is no different
from last year with Santa there's a
better way of doing that kind of thing
and that's the job submission API it's
very simple to do I'll just I'll
forensic Oh does it if you drop a file
on your desktop printer we rechecked the
printing system we off get does the
printer queue accept a file of this mime
type if if we get back a an answer that
says this mime types supported we submit
the job and so that shall show you how
good that is I ran a few tests on just
my humble old powerbook back in my
office with a variety of documents and
as you can see any document I print if
the files already on death I can print
it in a couple of seconds with the job
submission API you should be thinking
about using this if your application has
ability to generate its own printer
compatible file format PDF PostScript
tiff yes etc so strongly encourage you
to explore that and as you can see here
you can get huge performance benefits if
you take that route take that approach
so this point I'm going to hand over 20
no I'm going to summarize these slides
I'm going to hand over to Allen
deprecated we've got very confused about
a pap is watch for those when you
compile your code use those recommended
api's before you bring up the friend I
so that everything works smoothly in the
print dialog move away from quick-draw
we've got API to help you do that and
last but not least the job Commission
apos great way of speeding up printing
from your application and now something
new Coco print panel here's Allen
[Applause]
Panther shirt last year we were sitting
around saying okay what part of the
grading system has been rewritten in the
past two and a half three years and oh
the print dialog code has been rewritten
yet so basically what we've been working
on is rewriting the print dialog code
and paste that dialogue code to enable
the inclusion of cocoa pdes so what I'm
going to do is I'm going to do build a
simple p de coco PDE that basically this
is the old this is the old code that
sits on your developer examples printing
now basically if we go through here we
kind of see what what we're doing a
comment and then we get to here we have
oh we have to define how big we are it's
to define is that nut let's see what
else we have oh we have a whole I
unknown stuff I am I unknown instance
and really that's kind of hard to figure
out sometimes we have the contact stuff
we have we have a prologue and we get
into actually coding some of the stuff I
unknown address not much having to do
with printing when you're writing a
tioga based PDE so we have done is we
have allowed you to greatly simplify
writing a PDE so I'm going to do is I'm
just going to take that old a app SDK
sample code and i am going to personally
do is add into target and i am going to
at a loadable glendale cook a little
bundle I'm going to need it name it to
sample app pde and add it to this
project okay first thing I want to do is
assistive properties and beans we are a
cocoa class I'm going to name it to be
an end of principal class and what else
do i need to do go to build and we need
to add our like this is my kind of cheat
file right here at our framework search
path our print framework and our add
that into here okay those kids close
this out ok now listen now this is the
fun part I'm going to go to interface
builder i'm gonna select an empty cocoa
nib oh let's see what's next let's go
ahead and save this as
[Music]
sample at PE i'm going to add it to the
sample at pde target okay now i'm going
to let's do this get the subclass right
that's taken nsobject or is it in a
subject go okay there it is and we're
going to sub classes in to be a dental
appt te and then go back here files
owner and custom class I'm here snap pea
okay now the fun part let's go up here
at this grab the view they're just a NS
view let's make it a little bit bigger
add a checkbox
current selected text only there we go
okay now let's go back over here I guess
I now we need to add as hit our
connections in their custom close
connections add some outlet what am I
doing here we go
huh no classes
sometimes wrong oh okay here we go add
two outlets the first one is going to be
see sample app PE view which is the NFU
add another one which be our button
right selection button which is a and
it's buttons ok now let's let's go ahead
and connect these up that's the app now
fit button ok so everything's connected
up everything basically the nibs done
let's go ahead and select this and some
plot PD generate the classes that's
great to create the file for it that's
right in the basic print move ok let's
go ahead and create those ok so it
should be created and they now should be
should have appeared over here in our
project builder so now or did they go
hey
and I'll upper right
hmm I don't know where they actually
went that is it anyway isn't going so
hot if you print loop so they are
basically this is it here's here's our
here's our God eh file it's basically
what we want to do is absolutely it'll
teach you to over here first thing I
want to do is you want an import one
thing we have provided you is a callback
object that the PDE can call back into
to get information that he needs about
the printing system XA your print
session your print settings your page
format your current printer there are a
number of things that you can get back
from from the printing system while
you're in your pde so you don't have to
remember it you just call it whenever
you need information the other thing we
want to do is a the cocoa pdes are
implemented as a protocol so basically
what we want to do is make our pde or
this object conforms the pde plugin
protocol and one last thing we want to
save our callback and now let's just go
over to the dot m file and i will just
basically i'm just going to copy stuff
over that we need as we go through so
we're going to include our
basically we're include a our interface
for dialogue extensions get some of the
keys we need out of there okay first
thing we're going to do is we have three
static methods one of them is
initialized class and terminate class
these are called when when you're just
bundles can be loaded for the first time
you can return yes or no from the
initial a class if you fail on your
initialize we pass you the bundle just
for your reference so you can get it any
other ways and this one caterham a class
of its called once on the plugins I'm
not going to use anymore we don't do
anything next part is to get pdes for
plug-in type what this does is basically
this is where you stand what did I miss
I miss fish basically we do a git plugin
for pd type we pass you the pd type or
Derby app so the print dialog or page
setup we also pass you in the current
printer that is selected in the print
dialog basically we allocated an array
we do in an Alec and knit on our sample
app pde add it to the array and base if
we got anything back we return that
array or return nil next thing we do is
we initialize our class and here this is
where we path you to call back mechanism
to call back object you we pass it in
you just retain it and you can use it
throughout your other things and the
terminate is the same thing we just
remember you're done we're terminated
pde we're just going to basically
release your reference to that one thing
knew about the coca pdes of we only ask
for your view when we're going to show
your view so there is no need to create
your view you know during initialize or
open we will tell you when we will ask
you for the view when when we're ready
for it so basically here we are just uh
we haven't analyzed it yet we just do a
reloader nib and then return the top
view
next thing is pd name and pd type and pd
kind these are fairly similar to what
you what we had before and the taiga
stuff but here is like we call you when
we need it there is no you have to know
it up front and we just call it call it
whenever you needed and the another
change we did was think think kid
remember where you're going where you're
reading from the ticket writing to the
ticket where am I at so we actually
separated off these two calls and now we
have right values to ticket and reach
values to go do right values first
basically here we just go to right
values ticket we get our button should
we say get state create an NS data for
that and we here we are using your
callback message to get the print
settings so we use a call back as
callback object get the print settings
we get it back and we're using the API
that Paul just showed us the peanut
reading CM print settings set value
which basically sets are the app using
your app key and then read Diaries from
ticket is basically just the opposite of
that basically we get the print settings
we get the value out using p.m. print
settings get value and then we may
finally we set the state based on of the
button based on what's in the print
ticket another thing we have change is
fairly similar but it's a little bit
different is the get summary
information now we're returning in the
array of dicks array of dictionaries for
each item you want to show in your
summary in your summary area so
basically here we do we get the settings
we get the value get the value and then
I did that you can too yeah basically
print selection only yes no we get
create the dick with a summary and info
this only have one item so we're adding
an array and we're adding the item to
predict and returning that debt array
show hi is basically where those before
we call this to Greg before we're going
to show that you're pde and hide go hide
right after we hide the PD or right
before we hide the PD
another thing we're doing that's those
two and finally we have get supported
PPD option keys which is basically for
the PM printer module vendors this is in
a way of dynamically telling us what PPD
options you are supporting in your PDE
so they won't show up in the the other
settings of the advanced settings of pd
pain rather than a static in your daddy
and your info dick and soapy list we can
return the array right here and the
other one here the last one is TPD value
change something of working on that's
not quite implemented yet dealing with a
PPD value constraint the constraint
resolution so basically we're not really
quite ready to talk about this yet
because we're still in the process of
figuring out exactly what how we're
going to deal with this so it's go ahead
and save this hopefully I can build this
I wasn't expecting that I'm just
compiling oh well
okay so basically I will go to the
Summer Slide well that reboot and I will
show you when that reboots hopefully
it's a slides back on a little summary
of what we need for Coca pdes bases are
in implemented loadable bundles so we
don't have any of the CF bundle stuff
with the ion own I all that other stuff
the other thing is your class must
conform to the PDE dialogue protocol
plugin protocol we've added the pd
callback object which allows you to get
information from the printing system
such as your print session your print
settings or page format your current
printer also in there at the end it lets
you tell us to do certain things oh the
two current methods are to resize the
panel it would tell us what's how how
high you want it to reset you know what
size you want your new the new panel to
be so you can do a disclosure widget and
that way we will you can resize your
view then move resize the print dialog
to reflect that view they want to say is
you can use a full Coco functionality
inside your pde such as the binding you
can bind to a dictionary and then in
your right right settings a ticket you
can basically use the bindings that way
and the other thing is this sample code
that I just did Plus showing the resize
is going to be available on the ADCC
searchfeed server are we back up yet no
we are ok I'll be back up a little bit
using for Richard and maybe I'll have
time maybe we back up by then so I can
show it to him here's Richard Thank You
Alan not just for the demo which kernel
panic that's pretty rare actual
imprinting but actually for all that
work if anybody's written plugins before
for the print dialog one the first
things you have to fight your way
through is the CF plug-in I unknown
stuff which I've done a couple times and
it was well worth all that for Alan did
on this just so I didn't have to do that
again so thank you very much and it
probably helps you too well we'll see
last year we spent an hour I spent an
hour with you talking about the two
different printing past we have in
printing we have our PDF printing path
or preferred printing path and we have
our laser ID rate legacy printing path
and we spent that our really talking
about all the benefits with a PDF
printing path and doing a lot of begging
asking you please don't use the legacy
printing Pat and I'm here to beg a
little bit more no offense but in the
last year would come up with another
reason why we really want you to use PDF
the PDF printing path and that's
automator and it's Automator tied in the
PDF workflow so we're going to do a
couple demos and we're going to revise
to wow I think we're going to do a
couple demos and we're going to remind
you what was in PDF workflow so a PDF
workflow is the feature we added in 10
24 it's been around for a long time but
it's always been hidden you had to
enable a special folder and put these
PDF workflow items in that folder before
the print dialog change to show you this
new functionality the important parts
about PDF work floor well PDF workflow
or 21 it allowed you to hook the print
system on the user side normally when
you print we take the PDF full file we
submit it via an IP connection to the
print server and then the print job
takes place potentially on a different
machine but most certainly in a
different context and running as a
different user and so if you want to put
make a back end or a filter that's going
to present you I you have a lot of
difficulties you may be on a completely
different machine then the user
submitted a job bad or you just maybe in
a different context and not be running
as the same user so you can't write to
that users folders or access their files
so PDF workflow avoids those problems by
letting you do that all up front in the
users context running as the users ID so
that was one about PDF workflow the
other what's important part about PDF
workflow is that we have this digital
master concept we asked all our
applications when they print to please
render in the full fidelity give us your
PI resolution bitmaps give us as many
vectors as you can don't give us
rasterized images of your vectors give
us the best fidelity you can give us the
highest fidelity and that's what we call
digital master digital master PDF we
dutifully capture all of your drawing
with workflow you can then write a tool
to manipulate the full fidelity digital
master from the application so that's
the idea behind digital or behind PDF
workflow it's been there for a while we
have a documented you look at if you
never looked at it's pretty exciting
it's enabled always now in Tiger and
this is a big deal it's always been a
great feature but you had to know the
secrets so now it's always there and as
Alan showed previously it comes to
faulting this way on your CDs with save
as PDF and save as postscript but as you
add your own workflow items this pop-up
menu will grow and if you're somebody
like me who's written a few of these it
can grow quite a bit and you just start
making things that are useful you'll see
applications drawn in there so i can
send my PDF documents over into things
like illustrator which is great at
handling pdfs obviously sending it to
acrobat or spending the tools it'll
break down PDF rasterize the pdfs
anything you can really imagine you can
do with workflow so what kind of things
can you put in workflow and again this
is the type of list that we supported
sense really 10 to four you can put a
folder into the work with the PDS
services folder into the workflow folder
if you put a folder in there that
creates a hierarchical menu in your PDF
workflow pop-up so this allows you
organize your workflow items you put a
folder alias in there a full radius when
selected from that printer popup menu
will take the PDF full file and just
move it into the resolved alias of this
folder so i use this a lot for web
receipts this is an example i just
happen to like I make an alias of a web
receipts folder I make in my documents
folder I put it in PDF services and now
whenever buy anything online I go to my
workflow menu and I say web receipts and
it just makes a copy of my receipt
stores it there and now with spotlight
it's easy to search the whole thing
works pretty well together also hot
folders for applications like the still
are good this way you can make aliases
of applications put him in there when
that's selected we sent an open event to
the application with the PDF spool file
so you can use mail or photo shops when
I use a lot you can use Apple scripts
and you can write your own tools and the
tools can be written in either C or
objective c or pearl or Python or
anything you want but what's new now in
Tiger is automator so we allow you to
create an automator pipeline an
automator set of actions an automated
script the terminologies there
put that in your PBS service folder now
users can make their own workflow and
it's this is incredibly powerful and
it's very exciting I've been doing a lot
of work on this for example one of the
ones you see a lot with PDF workflow is
hey I want to take this PDF out of
whatever applications printing grab the
PDF and mail it to somebody and there
are a lot of different ways to do this
you can take an alias the mail and drop
it in there and then once you get when
you select that is a new document comes
up in mail a new mail message but it's
not doesn't have a person you're
starting to doesn't have a destination
so here's an example of an automator
script where you can set it up and say
hey whenever this gets elected I always
wanted to send it to this particular
person here's the text i want and add
the PDF and assuming that we're back up
we're going to go to demo one here and
i'm just going to show you that quick
Automator workflow example because it is
nice how easy it is to do so if we go
over into Automator i'm sorry back to
the preview act back to my previous in
this app so this is a cocoa pde it is
the print selected text only it does
work and here's showing the callback
mechanism that allows the pde to to
resize resize itself and to progressive
disclosure so it does work okay now back
to Automator so basically what we're
going to do is we are going to put a
meal that gets a new email widget or
whatever we are calling it now so i'm
going to send it to rich oh let's say
stuff please
let's review okay now i'm going to go
ahead and save this i'm going to put it
in my PDF services and i'm going to say
email and we're going to save it as an
application so let's go ahead and save
that now okay now is now in our PDF
services so let's go over here on my
documents and let's go to the Bears a
little little league schedule add up
rich one to know about so we're going to
go to hear we're going to go ahead and
try to print it and let me hold there's
your email and here is what you're rich
and here is our PDF document that is
attached to it very simple we'll come
back on over to the slides please and
again the ideas that's very easy for
users do right they just made their own
workflow item but because we're so PDF
centric we really want to provide a set
of auto major actions that will
manipulate PDF we want users and you
developers to be able to make powerful
PDF manipulation automator tools pro
item of your workflow so that that
workflow item or that workflow menu
becomes very powerful so what we're
doing at what we've done actually is
we've written PDF X items to extract
pages from PDF to join them to watermark
them and we'll be doing a bunch more I
expect we'll have probably a dozen or
two of these actions by default in the
system and tiger by the time we ship I
want to show next we'll go back to the
demo machine will see how these work
together right inside of another
automator actually let's go ahead and
see if we can find our PDF items okay
here they are we have three of them so
let's just go ahead and
personally to let's get or odd and even
pages let's go and put them in separate
files and then we're going to try to
watermark them so basically we're going
to add what should we add let's add a
blue and a green apple basically so the
goal here is to put a blue apple on the
odd pages and a green apple on the even
pages so let's go ahead and make the
apple a little bit bigger let's make it
show it's underneath and let's just turn
it just a bit and let's turn down the
opacity of it there we go so now then we
offer basically then we've watermark
them now we want to join them back
together into one one document and we
want to shuffle them so we get the
odd-even interlace and one last thing we
want to do is we want to then we'll just
go ahead and open it let's go to finder
and see you have open files and let's
just couldn't open it okay here we go
then we're going to go ahead and save it
again we want to go to the PDF services
let's name this one say watermark and we
want to save it as an application say
okay now let's go up and let's look at
the all the schedules so has 39 pages in
it go ahead and print this go to hear
here's our watermark
and watching the pipeline
ok here's the first page with the blue
apple green apple blue apple green apple
all the way through to the end thank you
all so what I like about that demo is
it's a non trivial example of what you
can do with automator and workflow and
if somebody asks you to do that and I
want you to watermark this document and
have different watermarks on the aden
even pages i know how you can maybe do
it manually but if they wanted you to
run to a set of documents I would I
wouldn't know where to start i guess i
would i'd probably go to python
scripting and start writing some Python
code but maybe a user wouldn't so you
can go back to the slides alright so
that's the power of Automator that's
power PDF workflow put together so the
question is well how can your
application take advantage of this
integration and it is simple it's what
we've always told you please use the PDF
work flow path or the PDF printing path
you can do that by drawing with quartz
that's the way we preferred you to do it
you can do it drawing with quick draw
even though that's deprecated if you go
through the normal quick-draw printing
path you'll generate a PDF school file
what will not work is if you use the
laser rider eight legacy printing path
that path is not being expanded its not
being supported anymore it still exists
and I have a tough time with people here
we actually have a little times like I
can do this analogy last year when I
said hey we're deprecating this I had
five six seven application riders coming
up to me and very worried that means
you're taking out the laser writer eight
legged see printing path for Panther and
say no we're not we're not taking out
just deprecated they said well then
we'll be taken out for the next version
said no we're not taking out there
either and you quickly lose any fear
that you can put in anybody when you say
it's difficult it's not going away so
the idea is we have to balance few
things one we really don't want you to
use this feature but we have to maintain
binary compatibility and so I used this
historical analogy of baseball in the
1920s well decided they didn't want
spitballs around anymore so they
deprecated them but they had this binary
compatibility problem that they had
pitchers who were still working and
still in the field
using spitballs so what they decided to
do is let those pictures keep working
they supported them but new pictures
could not use the spitball could not use
deprecated spitball so the point is if
you have a spitball application using
the laser a great legacy path we
definitely will keep you running we will
but if you're working on a new
application please don't use it or if
you're even revving your application
please sit down seriously and consider
ways that you can get off of laserwriter
a legacy praying path and we'll help you
we've done new API like the exhibition
dial or they print submissions api's
will help you in any way we can we did
the font creation ap is for you so let
us know what you need and we'll get you
off that and you can stop throwing those
spitballs just quickly going back to the
PDF workflow there are a couple api's
that are interesting if you really like
the workflow and you want to maybe write
an application that will master workflow
in a different way than the print dialog
does so if you want to do what our print
dialogue does here are the two AP is PM
workflow copy items will go look in the
directory is where the user can install
the workflow item and we'll come back
with a list it's essentially it's an
array of CF URLs that is all the
workflow items this user has set up and
if you need to run one use called p.m.
workflow submit PDF with options give
the workflow item you want to run the
title of the document a bunch of options
and the PDF file you want to process and
this is all our print dialog dozen so if
you wanted to write something that was
not distiller but somewhat akin
distilling that you had a batch
processing application that you're
running works those workflows through
these two calls will let you do it