|
In order to assist Black Ice Printer Driver users
to accomplish printing and Black Ice Printer Driver related tasks,
a Printer Driver Resource Toolkit package is provided FREE of charge
with the purchase of any Black Ice Generic Printer Driver.
The Printer Driver Resource Toolkit includes
a variety of sample applications with full source code, written in C, C++,
Visual Basic, and Delphi. It is also .NET compatible and includes
samples written in C#, VB .NET, and J#. Also included are several sample
installation scripts and many other tools that can
reduce development time and make applications development with the
Black Ice Printer Drivers much easier.
Visual Studio 2005,
and VB.NET 8.0 support has been added.
The tools and samples included in the Resource
Toolkit will help in the following areas:
- Printer
Driver User Interface Customization
- Installation Samples
- Programmatically Change Printer Settings
- Printing Without User Interaction
- Programmatically Print Files
- Integrate The Printer Driver Into An Application
- Provide Access to Features and Technologies Available
with Black Ice Products Only
- Additional Samples Provided
- Sample Comparison Chart
Printer
Driver User Interface
Customization.
The dialog box templates and
other resources used by Black Ice Printer drivers are stored in
a separate DLL. The source code for the DLL that contains these
resources are included in the Resource Toolkit. By modifying the
resource DLL, application developers can customize the user interface
of the printer driver. Controls on dialog boxes can be repositioned,
resized or even hidden. The only items that cannot and should not
be changed are the About box and the version and license information
of the printer driver.
Since the name of the resource
DLL is stored in the printer drivers DEVMODE structure, the resource
DLL can be renamed to avoid conflict with other Black Ice printer
drivers installed on a system.
The
resource DLL also includes every text string used by the printer
driver. Localization / internationalization of the printer driver
can be handled very easily by translating these strings to other
languages.
The
dialog box tabs on the printer driver user interface also can be
hidden by modifying a value in the printer driver’s INI file. These
INI file setting can be set at installation time or they can be
changed anytime, even programmatically from an application. The
printer driver will read these values every time the printer driver
user interface is displayed.
Furthermore, all of the Black
Ice printer driver components can be renamed for use in a custom application.
In addition to renaming the individual DLLs, the printer driver can be installed
with a custom name to provide a more seamless integration into the developed
application.
Installation Samples.
The
Resource Toolkit includes an
InstallShield
, MSI
, Visual Basic
& VB.NET 8.0 sample projects which install
and configure the Black Ice printer driver. The installation
sample projects
are provided as starting points for creating user specific printer
driver installations.
Additionally,
the documentation included in the Resource Toolkit contains detailed
information on how to install the Black Ice printer driver
with a single function call using installation
packages other than Install Shield (packages like Wise and Microsoft
Installer). Full source code for both an install and an uninstall
DLL are also included. These DLLs implement every required function
necessary to install and remove a printer driver. The Black
Ice printer drivers can be installed or uninstalled using a single
function call from the appropriate DLL.
The
Install Shield project included in the Resource Toolkit was
generated with Install Shield 12
and in order to rebuild the sample installation package
Install Shield 12 or newer is required. The
Visual Basic installation project was written using VB 6.0.
The MSI Install was written using Visual
Studio .NET 2005.
Multiple Instances of the Black Ice printer drivers can be installed
on a single system, allowing for increased file processing.
Programmatically Change Printer Settings.
Black Ice printer drivers
have many settings that affect the way documents are going to be
printed. These printer settings can be changed manually through the
printer driver's user interface or programmatically from an application
without any user interaction.
The Resource Toolkit includes
a powerful API (a DLL for C/C++ and an ActiveX control for VB, Delphi,
C#, etc) that contains over 300 easy to use functions to control
printer driver settings.
Typically, VB environments
do not provide any programming capability to change printer settings.
However, the Resource Toolkit includes an ActiveX control which
is unique in that it allows printer manipulation through VB and
it is available only for Black Ice Printer Drivers.
There are several samples included
with full source code written in C, C++, VB, VB .NET, C#, J# and
Delphi that show how to change printer settings.
The samples were built
with Visual C++ 6.0, Visual Basic 6, Visual Studio .NET and Delphi
5.
Printing Without User Interaction.
The Print Job
Control functionality included in the Resource Toolkit contains
features like pausing, restarting and deleting print jobs.
Developers can get a list of the current print jobs, then pause or
delete any print jobs they need to control. Developers can also
query the total number of print jobs for the specified printer and
the status of each specified job to see if the job is printing,
paused, etc.
Additional print
job specific information that can be retrieved from the Black Ice
printers includes:
-
the name of the
machine that created the print job
-
the name of the
user that owns the print job
-
the name of the
print job ( the document name, for example, "MS-WORD: Review.doc")
-
the job’s
priority
-
the job's
position in the print queue
-
total number of
pages in the document
-
the number of
pages that have printed
-
the time the
job was submitted
Programmatically Print Files.
The Resource Toolkit for the Black Ice
printer drivers contains two sample applications which demonstrate
how to programmatically print to the Black Ice printer drivers.
The sample applications demonstrate how to programmatically print
common file types, such as Microsoft Office and PDF files. The
Resource Toolkit includes full source code which can be used
by developers to add support for additional file types. For
specific details on the specific sample applications, please use the
links below:
Integrate
the Printer Driver Into an Application.
When the printer driver is
used as a part of an application, there are several ways to allow
the application to communicate with the printer driver.
The printer driver can communicate with the application in a number
of ways:
The Printer Driver Resource toolkit includes
samples with full source code written in several programming languages
which demonstrate every aspect of the printer driver integration.
These samples can be used as a starting point in the printer driver
integration process and they can be easily modified to accomplish
application specific tasks.
For additional information about printer driver
integration, please click on the links above.
Provide
Access
to Features and Technologies Available with Black Ice Products Only
Black Ice printer drivers
support several features and technologies that no other printer
driver vendor supports. In order to make use of these technologies,
there are several applications included in the Resource Toolkit
that demonstrate these features.
The following list enumerates
these Black Ice specific technologies. Please click on the links
below to get more information about these features.
Additional Samples Provided
Web based Document Conversion (HTML,
ASP)
-
Demonstrates how to print to the Black Ice printer drivers using
ASP, for web based printing. This sample uses Print Wrapper OCX (C++, VB
sample provided) but other programming techniques can be used
too (e.g. services).
Print2FTP (.NET J#,.NET C#, .NET VB, C++,
Delphi, VB)
E-mail
Add-on (.NET C#, .NET VB, C++,
Delphi, VB)
OutputFilename
(.NET C#, .NET J#, .NET VB, C++, Delphi)
-
The
OutputFileName sample will show how to get the name of the
output images from the group file.
Restrict Printing
(.NET C#,.NET VB, C++, Delphi, VB)
-
The Black Ice
printer drivers include a feature which allows the driver to
refuse any print jobs other than those coming from the
developer’s printing application. The restriction is made using
a password.
SaveAsDialog
(.NET C#,.NET VB, C++, Delphi, VB)
-
The printer
driver supports 7 different file name generation methods.
However, sometimes the output files (images) need to be saved to
different folders using different filenames.
UseDocumentName
(.NET C#,.NET VB, C++, Delphi, VB)
-
After printing,
this application will convert the selected items name to the
original (before printing).
Message Capture
(. NETJ#, .NET VB, .NET ASP, VB, C++, Delphi)
-
Demonstrates
how to capture the printer driver messages sent at every
StartDoc, StartPage, EndDoc, EndPage.
Message Capture
Service
(. NETJ#, .NET VB, .NET ASP, VB, C++, Delphi)
-
Demonstrates how to capture the printer
driver messages, using a service, sent at every
StartDoc, StartPage, EndDoc, EndPage.
INI File Generator
(C++)
-
Demonstrates
how to easily create an INI file to be used by the Black Ice
printer driver installation.
Print Job Control
(C++, VB)
-
Demonstrates
how to control print jobs once they are put into the spooler.
Replace User
Settings
(.NET VB, .NET ASP, VB, C++, Delphi)
-
Demonstrates
how to reset the printer settings programmatically.
Home >
Printer
Drivers
> Resource Toolkit |
