Chapter 13. Using the Printer

The concept of device independence may have seemed all well and good when we were using the video display for text and graphics. But how well does the concept hold up for printers?

In general, the news is good. From a Microsoft Windows program, you can print text and graphics on paper using the same GDI functions that we’ve been using for the video display. Many of the issues of device independence that we’ve explored earlier in this book—mostly related to the size and resolution of the display surface and its color capabilities—can be approached and resolved in the same way. Yet a printer is not simply a display that uses paper rather than a cathode-ray tube. There are some significant differences. For example, we ...

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