Restrict which
applications can print to the Black Ice Printer Drivers
Take control of the Black Ice printer drivers by
accepting print jobs only from specific
applications.
The Black Ice printer driver just got better with a
new 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. The printer driver will print
jobs only from the application that “knows” the
password. The password can be any string defined by
the developer.
The Black Ice printer driver will scan the document
name passed by the printing application for the
presence of the password, i.e the $MyPassword$
string. If the password string is present in the
document name, the files are generated, if the
document name does not contain the password, the
print job will be aborted.
Developers can integrate this feature into their
applications which use the printer driver to ensure
that no other application, such as Word, Excel, etc.
can print to the Black Ice printer driver.
Real world scenario:
The new feature is very useful in situations where
an application is developed to print data from a
specific database to the Black Ice printer driver
and then email to a destination or otherwise post
process the printed images or PDF files. The
application would check for the EndDoc message sent
by the printer driver to process and email the
created file. Lets assume that only files created
and printed based on the database information should
be emailed. In the case that a user on the PC
accidentally prints from Word, Excel or any other
application to the Black Ice printer driver, this
incorrect information would be printed, processed
and sent by the developer’s application.
Using the new password feature this scenario cannot
happen, since Word will not put the password into
the document name.
The new print job restriction functionality also
ensures that end users aren’t abusing the
developer’s application by simply taking advantage
of the presence of a document conversion printer
driver for use with other applications.
The password must be specified in the INI file for
the printer driver, and such can be specified at
install time or changed programmatically at any
time:
[Settings]
Password=$MyPassword$
The password feature is not intended to be used to
authenticate users. If you need a secure method to
restrict printing only for a limited number of
users, you can use the BiPlug-in feature. To read
more about the BiPlug-in feature, visit
http://www.blackice.com/Printer Drivers/Custom Plug
In Support.htm