New
AutoPrint DLL and OCX for Black Ice Printer Drivers!
Black Ice Software has
just released new AutoPrint controls (BiAutoPrint)
which can be used to programmatically print
Microsoft Office, Text, HTML, and PDF documents.
Now, using the new BiAutoPrint controls, developers
can easily create batch converter applications
capable of processing thousands of documents without
any user interaction.
The BiAutoPrint controls
can be used by developers to print DOC, TXT, RTF,
PPS, PDF, XLS, HTM and HTML files directly from
their applications, without any user interaction,
using only a few function calls. In addition to
providing automated printing, the controls can also
be used to programmatically change the default
printer on the system.
The BiAutoPrint
functionality is provided as both a DLL and an
ActiveX control to accommodate a range of
programming languages including C/C++ and
VB/Delphi/C#.NET developers.
Using the BiAutoPrint
controls is as easy as calling the BIAPInitialize()
function to initialize the printing control and then
calling the BIAPStartPrinting() function for each
document you need to print. Pass the name of the
file to be printed and the name of the target
printer as parameters, and the BiAutoPrint control
will do the printing for you. After printing the
document is done, use the BIAPEndPrinting() function
to signal the end of the printing to the control, so
a new document can be printed. The end of the
printing can be detected using multiple methods, one
of them would be by monitoring the print queue using
the existing Black Ice functionality.
A second, more efficient
way to detect when printing has finished would be
taking advantage of the Black Ice printer driver
messaging interface to capture the EndDoc message
that is sent every time a document has finished
printing.
Using the
BIAPGetDefaultPrinter() and BIAPSetDefaultPrinter()
functions, developers can retrieve and change the
default printer on the system.
In addition to providing
the BiAutoPrint DLL and ActiveX controls with the
Black Ice Printer Driver Resource Toolkits,
developers will also be provided with full source
code for these components, allowing them to expand
the functionality of these controls to include
support for additional file formats.
