Simplify
the Printer Driver’s user interface. Part II.
Continued
from October’s issue
III.
Internationalization
Developers
can customize the Resource DLL in order
to internationalize the printer driver’s
user interface, and to add support for
foreign languages. All of the string on
the user interface can be edited; also
all of the strings used and displayed by
the printer driver are stored in the string
table in the Resource DLL. For example,
if a developer would like to ship the printer
driver to the German market, then they
can translate the strings from the string
table, change the labels on the dialog
box to German text, and can resize and
move the controls on the user interface
in order to fit the German text. In order
to change the name of the papers, developers
can edit the printer driver’s INI file.
IV.
Add/remove paper formats
Each
paper size used by the printer driver can
be edited, removed or new paper sizes can
be created. To add or modify existing paper
sizes developers or end users can use the “Edit
paper list" option on the General Settings
tab of the printer driver’s user interface.
Using the paper list manager it is easy
to add new papers, modify existing ones
or delete (or just hide) unnecessary paper
sizes.
All
paper sizes are stored in the printer drivers
INI file. After modifying the list of papers,
developers can hide the “Edit paper list" button
from the user interface. This way the end
users are limited to use the papers that
the developer made available for them.
V.
Hide unused file formats
Usual
applications that integrate the printer
driver are typically using only a few file
formats. Faxing application most likely
will use only the TIFF Group3 1D file format.
If the end user changes the printing output
to color JPEG, that may cause problems
in the application which integrates the
printer driver. The best solution is to
restrict the end users to only use the
file formats supported by the developer’s
application.
File
formats can be disabled using the INI file.
At the UI File formats section, enter a
0 for each file format name you would like
to hide. This way the disabled file formats
will not show up for the end user in the
File Format selection list.
[UI
FileFormats]
Microsoft
DIB format=0
TIFF
Group4=0