[WinPrnDev] Re: Creating a Printer Driver

  • From: "Jason Harrison" <jharrison@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <winprndev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:33:01 -0700

Actually the SPL file format is well documented by Microsoft, as is EMF.  You 
can find the descriptions at msdn.microsoft.com

 

However, because SPL files can contain fonts, etc, it is probably a much better 
idea to use and XPS based printer driver because the
XPS will contain all of the fonts and can be sent to a printer on the server 
much more easily and reliably than a SPL file can.

 

However, if the students that Sam alludes to are using Mac or Linux computers 
(laptops?) then he'll have to support that format too.

 

It might be better to use a simple web page that allows students to upload the 
original document to be printed, and a script on the
windows server side that downloads the document and calls ShellExecuteEx to 
print it.  The server would have to be Windows (if
you're using ShellExecuteEx) but the remote computers could be anything.

 

But as we eluded, unless all of the use cases and requirements have been fully 
discussed ahead of time, this could pose a security
risk, or miss implementing a required feature. On the other hand if this is 
just a proof of concept/experiment then the cost of
failure is much lower.

 

-Jason

 

--

Jason Harrison
Sr Software Developer
PDFTron Systems, Inc.
www.pdftron.com
Tel:  1-604-730-8989
Fax: 1-604-676-2477
Email: jharrison@xxxxxxxxxxx

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P Please think before you print!

 

From: winprndev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:winprndev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Abdul Qader
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 2:33 AM
To: winprndev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [WinPrnDev] Re: Creating a Printer Driver

 

Sam,

 

The SPL file is the spool file created by the spooler service . It can have two 
formats EMF and RAW. A RAW format is just a bit by
bit description of ever pixel and so it would be dumped to the printer by the 
driver.

In case of EMF format all the commands that we use to paint the window are 
stored .So by using the EMF you can play the commands to
the desired context to reproduce the whole image that you had created in your 
window.

Technically extracting the EMF from the spool file is undocumented. You can 
find the details in  <http://www.fengyuan.com/> Windows
Graphics Programming written by Feng Yuan . 

 

Abdul

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Sam Elamin <hussam_88@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Abdul




I am trying to understand what you are saying.


Do you mean the spool file by "SPL"? and what do you mean by the EMF? what does 
the Virtual Print Processor exactly do?

I am sorry for my complete ignorance but I am very new to the Print Driver 
world (2 days to be exact) so these terms are all new to
me.


Regards

Sam



  _____  

Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:12:18 +0530


Subject: [WinPrnDev] Re: Creating a Printer Driver

From: abqader.iqbal@xxxxxxxxx
To: winprndev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


Sam,

 

You can get the SPL files from the Printers folder.You will need to extract the 
EMF from the spool file and play the EMF on the
corresponding context.

So you will need to create a Virtual Print Processor.The path where the spool 
files are stored are kept in the registry.

The PrintProcessor exports some calls of which PrintDocumentonPrintProcessor is 
what you need to look out for.

 

Please let me know if you need more info on this.We had implemeted some thing 
close to what you did.

 

Thanks

Abdul

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Sam Elamin <hussam_88@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello Everyone


I am trying to develop a printer driver which will be installed on a client 
side, what i need this driver to do is just save the
path of documents sent to it to a string and forward that string to an ASP.NET 
application which will upload the document to a print
server.


now i already have the upload client working so here is the scenario which the 
printer will work on.


Document "X" is printed to a printer with the installed driver (Printer "A")


Printer "A" will then get the path of the given document and save it to string 
"Path", "Path" will then be sent to a Webpage which
will upload it.




I kept it as basic as possible because i just want to know if it could be done?


Regards
Sam

 

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