How to: Printer Driver

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Support - 28 Jun 2005 19:40 GMT

Hello:
I would like to create my own printer driver so that it is available in all
applications through the file ->Print menu of applications.
The driver will essentially take the contents of what is in the parent
application and save it so file (like a file - save as).
I will do some information processing when the printer driver is called so I
will need it to open a form (like other drivers do).
I am reading about pdd files and I see a *ResourceDLL: "lmpclres.dll" entry.

Question 1): is that the dll where my form would reside ?
Question 2): How then would you acquire, pull the data from the parent
application (could be an image or a text file) - once pulled, it would be
trivial to create a file and save the data there...
Thanks
Terry

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Armin Zingler - 28 Jun 2005 20:36 GMT

> Hello:
> I would like to create my own printer driver so that it is available
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> Thanks
> Terry

A real driver? I think you chose the wrong environment to do this. Here's a
starting point for driver development:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/ddkint/hh/ddkint/ddksplash_0d0ef7c0-7411
-4fed-8c52-ef4690fe6e40.xml.asp

Good luck! :-)

Armin

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C-Services Holland b.v. - 29 Jun 2005 09:19 GMT

> Hello:
> I would like to create my own printer driver so that it is available in all
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> Thanks
> Terry

A printer driver doesn't pull anything from the application. It just
gets handed the info it needs to print. And then specifically what to
print, where on the page in what font and colour.

Did you expect to pull data from an application like MS Access and
expect to pull records from the opened database and write the contents
to a database?

Signature

Rinze van Huizen
C-Services Holland b.v.

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Support - 30 Jun 2005 15:21 GMT

Thanks for your information ....
The big picture is that I am designing a document management application...
so I am looking for a ubiquitous interface.
The Adobe - printer interface model seemed very powerfull.
So we want to deploy a "virtual" printer that when clicked would:
1) save the file to a location
2) prompt the user for some information
I have no experience wrting printer drivers. Just started vb.net a couple
of years ago and am learning about printer drivers.
The fact that it get's handed the info is good - now I need to learn
1) what format is the info coming in (doc, xl, txt, tiff, etc...)
and save to file accordingly.
That's the plan
Thanks for any insight
Terry
Big picture is that i am designing a document management application - so I
am looking for

>> Hello:
>> I would like to create my own printer driver so that it is available in
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
> to pull records from the opened database and write the contents to a
> database?

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C-Services Holland b.v. - 30 Jun 2005 15:44 GMT

> Thanks for your information ....
> The big picture is that I am designing a document management application...
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> Thanks for any insight
> Terry

I don't have experience with writing printer drivers myself, so that
ends it for me. But to me it sounds like you just need a PDF printer
driver. PDF995 for instance behaves like a printer, but it will ask you
where to store the file.

One of my coworkers was checking out an open source PDF printer on
sourceforge.net but I can't remember the name of it. Maybe you could
search there and modify it to suit your needs.

Signature

Rinze van Huizen
C-Services Holland b.v.

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How to: Printer Driver

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