[Chapter 17] 17.4 Printing Example
Author: John Zukowski
Date: Thu Jul 31 14:58:08 1997

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| Chapter 17 Printing |

## 17.4 Printing Example

Now that you know about the different classes necessary to print, let's put it all together. Printing takes four steps:

1. Get the `PrintJob`:

       PrintJob pjob = getToolkit().getPrintJob(this, "Job Title", (Properties)null);

2. Get the graphics context from the `PrintJob`:

       Graphics pg = pjob.getGraphics();

3. Print by calling `printAll()` or `print()`. When this method returns, you can call `dispose()` to send the page to the printer:

       printAll(pg);
       pg.dispose(); // This is like sending a form feed

4. Clean up after yourself:

       pjob.end();

The following code summarizes how to print:

    // Java 1.1 only
    PrintJob pjob = getToolkit().getPrintJob(this, "Print?", (Properties)null);
    if (pjob != null) {
            Graphics pg = pjob.getGraphics();
            if (pg != null) {
                printAll(pg);
                pg.dispose();
            }
        pjob.end();
    }

This code prints the current component: what you get from the printer should be a reasonable rendition of what you see on the screen. Note that we didn't need to modify `paint()` at all. That should always be the case if you want your printer output to look like your onscreen component.

Component Methods |  | Printing Arbitrary Content