Version 10.0 of the Fax C++/ActiveX implements V.34 faxing
based on the Class 1.0 fax command set and will send V.34
faxes to any fax modem or board on the market that supports
Class 1.0 and V.34 faxing. A fax sent at 33,600 bps is more
than twice as fast as a fax sent at 14,400 bps. The increased
transmission speed increases performance by drastically
reducing training time. The same fax can be sent in half the
time as before, saving money on phone bills and allowing more
faxes than before to be sent using the same phone line.
For example, a fax broadcast application
can transmit an average page in around 1 minute without V.34
faxing. This means that it can transmit 60 pages per hour per
channel and 1440 pages per channel per day. It would take
almost 3 days to transmit 100,000 pages on 24 channels without
V.34. Because of the increased transmission speed of a V.34
fax transmission, the same amount of faxes can be sent in half
the time or with half the channels, compared to the non V.34
mode.
V.34 faxing will also have a drastic effect
on Color Faxing. One of the reasons for color faxing’s slow
take off is transmission speed. A color page can take several
minutes to transmit and that is longer than most users can
wait. With V.34 faxing, the transmission time of color faxes
will be cut in half.
Black Ice Software’s fast color printer
driver technology and V.34 faxing will give a boost to an
array of fax products. Black Ice Software is already in the
process of releasing several products based on V.34 and Color
Fax technology. The first products that will include V.34 and
Color Faxing are the Impact Fax Broadcast and Impact Fax
Server. Look for our Impact Fax newsletter for more details.
In the last issue of our developer
newsletter we discussed how to use multiple printer settings
by installing more than one printer. Developers who integrate
the Black Ice printer drivers into their application often
need two or more different sets of settings for the printer
driver. The following article continues our description of the
possible solutions available to application developers who use
the Black Ice printer drivers.
2. Use the “Profile Manager", new in the
Black Ice printer drivers
Beginning with version 8.12 of the Black
Ice printer drivers, the Profile Manager has been available to
developers. The Profile Manager enables saving a specific
group of settings as a profile which can be recalled later .
If a developer’s application needs to
produce two distinct file types (TIFF 204 x198 DPI for faxing)
and JPEG (100 x 100 DPI for internet), 2 profiles should be
created, each of which will contain the desired settings..
All of the Black Ice printer setting
dialogs can then be hidden from the end user by utilizing the
INI file settings (BiCiniNT.ini for the color driver) leaving
only the Profile Manager available to the user. The user can
be restricted so they can only select one of the available
profiles, and they cannot change any other settings. This
approach ensures that the application that integrates the
Black Ice printer driver will only handle supported file
formats, and the user cannot generate (print) unsupported
image formats.
3. Programmatically change the printer
settings.
Usually the user changes the printer
settings manually from the User Interface (Printers ->
Printing Preferences), by selecting different options. However
in some case the developer may need to change the printer
settings to match their application’s requirements. The most
common changes are the page size, orientation, output
directory and file name generation method, all of which are
supported in the Black Ice printer driver to be changed
programmatically as necessary.
The Black Ice printer driver comes with a
Resource Toolkit which among other things, contains the
BlackIceDEVMODE,OCX and BlackIceDEVMODE.DLL controls which
provide developers with a tool allowing them to easily change
any of the printer settings using VB, C/C++, Delphi, VB.NET,
C#, etc. Using the BlackIceDEVMODE controls the developer
simply has to call the appropriate function to change any
printer setting to the desired setting.
For example, in order to change the output
directory, the developer’s application should load the devmode
using the LoadBlackIceDEVMODE () function, specify the new
desired path using the SetOutputDirectory() function , and
then save the settings to the printer using the
SaveBlackIceDEVMODE() function. It is as simple as that. When
a user opens the user interface or prints from an application,
he will see and use the new output folder which was
programmatically set by the application.