Windows Printing Overview

A Windows application prints in much the same manner that it renders the client area of a frame window. How does this work? Let's cover a little about rendering graphics on raster devices (screens) and then discuss metafiles. These two subjects form the foundation of Windows printing.

The Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) is the system API layer concerned with the precise placement of a dot of a given color on a rendering surface. There are GDI APIs that draw text, lines, bitmaps, or geometric shapes. Many GDI APIs use conceptual tools such as brushes and pens to style the graphics. A pen may draw a colored, wide, dotted line, for instance. Closed shapes may be filled with solid or dithered colors using a brush. ...

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