The operation of printing a map is in many respects similar to the operation of map display. In both cases some map representation, that is, a theme, is displayed. The main difference is that during printing operation the medium for display is not the monitor screen, but an output device: printer or plotter.
It is possible to run the operation either from the map browser window, or from the navigation window. In both cases the button 
or the menu command GDB+Print can be used.
If the operation of printing is started from the map browser window, the current displayed fragment of the browsed theme is printed in the form which is maximally close to the form of displaying this fragment on the screen.
If the operation is started from the navigation window it is possible to perform printing of a map, any map component (layer or feature type) or several selected components at once, and also printing of a cataloged theme or its components. In any case displayed fragment and the set of displayed features will be exactly the same as when performing the command Edit+Open for displaying the selected components.
Only displayed fragment of cataloged theme can be an exception. Using theme properties it is possible to specify such a narrow horizontal or vertical area that the system cannot create the browser window with such proportions and automatically corrects the size of displayed fragment. There is no such problem in printing, the system is able to display as narrow fragment as required.
It should be noted that components for printing should necessarily be selected in the right pane of the navigation window, that is, in the list pane. If a component is selected in the hierarchical pane, instead of printing this component, its structure will be printed (for example, for a map a list of its layers will be printed).
Printing of individual maps and themes can be considered as a simple method of receiving output documents of intermediate, working character. There are much more possibilities for forming output documents when using such ObjectLand tool as layouts (Chapter 44 “Layout structure”).
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