Levels of Printing

The printing functionality available to the user depends on the level of integration you use. There are three levels of print integration:

• Complete print integration

  You should do complete integration if you have the ability to modify the application's source code.

  When you do complete print integration, users can print data files on various printers by dropping them on printer drop zones (the Front Panel Printer control and printer icons in Print Manager). Certain other desktop behaviors are also implemented (see "Desktop Printing Environment Variables").

• Partial print integration

  You should do partial integration if you do not have the ability to modify the application's source code, but you do have the ability to invoke printing by way of an action.

  When you do partial integration, your application provides a subset of full-integration functionality. For example, by using the LPDEST environment variable, your application's printing mechanism will obtain the print destination from the drop zone.

• No print integration.

  If an application cannot supply a print action for its data files, you should configure the data files to display an error dialog box when users drop the files on printer drop zones.