The disclosed embodiments provide a system that performs a print job. During operation, the system obtains one or more available media attributes, including a media size, a border size, and/or a media type, from a printer associated with the print job. Next, the system provides the available media attributes to an application and uses the application to automatically generate and format print data for the print job based on the available media attributes. Finally, the system sends the print job to the printer, where the print job is executed using the printer.