Printing and Writing to PDF

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PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a universal file format that preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed exactly as intended by anyone with a PDF compatible reader. PDF files are ideal for documents that are intended for print.

Info
Local Printer: A printer attached to the parallel port or USB port of your computer.

LPR
BSD is for Berkeley System Distribution, a family of Unix versions. LPR is the Unix Line PRinter print command. This does not actually print files but rather copies (or links) them to a spool area, then a daemon copies them from the spool area to the printer.

CUPS
The Common UNIX Printing System ("CUPS") is a cross-platform printing solution for all UNIX environments. It is based on the "Internet Printing Protocol" and provides complete printing services to most PostScript and raster printers. CUPS is provided under the GPL.

AppleTalk
A communications protocol created by Apple that handles file sharing and print sharing in a user-friendly, icon-based user interface. All Macs support AppleTalk networks through the system software. AppleTalk is usually called a "chatty" network because there is constant low-level flow of information between the connected computers, which facilitates the ease-of-use but limits network performance somewhat because of the extra traffic.

PostScript
PostScript is a page description language (PDL) developed by Adobe Systems. In essence, it is a programming language for describing how a page is to be printed or displayed.

Printing and Writing to PDF

The Printers preference lets you add, remove and select a default printer, or choose to print to PDF (Portable Document Format). In the bottom part of the panel you can check the status of your print jobs.

To add a printer or a PDF writer click Add..., then choose whether you want to add a local or a network printer.

If you choose Local Printer and click Continue, a window opens that asks for a printer name, type, and connection method. When it comes to Network Printer, you are also asked for a printer name and type. Add the required information and click Add to add your printer to the Printers portion of the preference panel, click Make Default if you want this as your default printer.

If you want to print to a non-AppleTalk network printer

To remove a printer, mark it and click Remove. Note that in the Tracker, when you click on a network printer that is already configured, the Printers Preference opens with that printer selected, so that you can see pending jobs, make it the default printer or remove it.

You will probably use the option Print to file, which lets you print the Postscript output to a file. Print to file in combination with other printer types produces output to a file in the page description language of the specified printer.

Print Preview is a virtual, onscreen printer that lets you view print output onscreen, and make decisions about font, layout and more, without wasting paper. You can access it by choosing Add in the Printers panel; this brings up the Add a Local or Network Printer dialog box, where you can choose Local Printer and then click Continue. The Add a Local Printer dialog box opens; choose Preview from the Printer Type popup, and you'll be able to review onscreen what you print output will look like on paper.

PDF specific settings

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