I am trying to popup a native page dialog and print dialog through PrinterJob API on a windows system which has a disconnected printer. When I call PrinterJob.pageDialog() or PrinterJob.printDialog(), no dialog pops up and the control proceeds to the next line without showing a dialog. I also tried the same scenario with AWT PrintJob and Service Dialog from merlin and I have listed my observations below:

AWT PrintJob:
-------------
Native Dialog:
--------------
PrintJob is null when the default printer connected to the system is disconnected.

Common Dialog:
--------------
Dialog is shown. PrintJob is getting created. But PrintJob.getGraphics() returns null.

NONE dialog:
------------
PrintJob.getGraphics() is returning null

PrinterJob: (Kestrel)
----------------------
Native Dialog:
--------------
No dialog is shown. No exception is thrown. Does not print anything. Fails silently.

Common Dialog:
--------------
Dialog is shown. When calling PrinterJob.print(), an exception is thrown saying printer is not accepting jobs.

No Dialog:
----------
A PrintException is thrown.

Merlin Printing
---------------

Common Dialog:
--------------
An exception is thrown at the time of printing. Dialog is shown properly.

No Dialog:
----------
An exception is thrown at the time of printing.

When you look at the above observations more closely, you would notice that PrinterJob's native print dialog is not shown and the application fails silently. This kind of silent failures are hard to debug. Hence an exception must be thrown to notify the user that printer is not accepting jobs currently, to make the behavior consistent across all other APIs. This is a PIT failure. On the previous builds, this is throwing an Internal Error at the time of popping up the native dialog. In all other cases, a NPE is thrown on the prev. build.

I have attached a sample code with all the above options. Run the sample code on a windows machine that has a disconnected network printer. if you notice the above behavior, the bug is reproduced.

I tested this with Xerox Docuprint N4025 Postscript printer on Win XP pro.
Here is the PIT build:

java version "2d-jcg-sparc-01-2004-03-23.tiger"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 2d-jcg-sparc-01-2004-03-23.tiger)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0-beta2-b43, mixed mode)