Black Ice Printer Driver News

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This page contains information about the latest printer driver optimizations and additions.  For additional information, please visit the printer driver product page or our newsletter archive

April 2008

Load an Image PDF into DIB

How to Configure PDF Settings Through the Printer Driver’s INI File

Using BiPrint.ocx in JavaScript

How to Configure the PDF Settings in the Black Ice Printer Driver

March 2008

New PDF Settings in Printer Driver Version 10.10

February 2008

New PDF File Format is Available in the Black Ice Printer Drivers

Printing Color PowerPoint Documents with the AutoPrint Sample

January 2008

Printing Tip: How to Create a Silent MSI Printer Driver Install for Vista

Printing Tip: How to Modify the Driver File Names for an MSI Install

December 2007

How to Hide File Formats in the Printing Preferences

New Digitally Signed Printer Driver Files

Installing the Printer Driver through Remote Desktop

November 2007

Why Can’t I Use Multiple Instances of Message Capture at the Same Time?

How to Set Common Printer Driver Settings Depending on a Physical Printer

How to Set Parameters for the Start Application Feature Programmatically in C#

October 2007

How Can I Set the Generate Image in Memory Feature Programmatically in A VB.NET Project?

How to Set Common Printer Driver Settings Depending on a Physical Printer

September 2007

Which Files do you Need to Install to Use BiAutoPrint.ocx in a VB.NET Application?

Printing Documents Programmatically

How to Set Word Coordinates in the Text Output File

August 2007

How to Restore Bates Numbering Settings From the Printer Driver’s INI File

How to Create a Silent MSI Install for the Black Ice Printer Drivers

July 2007

How to Create a General Message Capture Application

Printing Tips: How the Built-in Print Dialog Works on Windows Operating Systems

June 2007

Communication Between 64 bit user-mode Printer Driver and a 32 bit Application

May 2007

How to Install More than one Printer Driver on your System

How to Install the Printer Driver with the Single Function Call

Sharing Black Ice Printers between 32 and 64 bit Operating Systems

April 2007

64 bit Printer Drivers are Here

Printer Driver RTKs for 64 bit Printer Drivers

March 2007

First 64bit Printer Driver is here, and Ready to Ship!

Limitations of Windows Vista

February 2007

New 32 bit User-Level Printer Drivers

January 2007

PRINTER DRIVERS: HOW TO CONFIGURE PRINTERS FROM .NET

HOW TO USE BLACK ICE SOFTWARE DLLS IN C#

December 2006

Introduction to Resource Toolkit Samples

Changing Printer Driver Settings (DEVMODE Between Print Jobs

November 2006

XML Format added to Printer Driver

October 2006

Another New Watermark Feature in the Printer Drivers

August 2006

New Watermark Feature in the Printer Drivers

July 2006

Printer Driver Sharing Utility

Using ePrintAnywhere to map Black Ice Printer Drivers onto Terminal Servers

May 2006:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER FileName Generation in Printer Driver!

April 2006:

Black Ice Software Announces Print2FTP for the Printer Drivers!

March 2006:

Demo RTK - Dramatically Reduce Your Printer Driver Evaluation

Printer Driver Visual Basic 2005 Install Sample

February 2006:

Email Add-on for Printer Drivers

Printer Driver - Replace User Settings Sample

Printer Driver - Use Document Name for Image Name

January 2006:

Tiff Format to Support Cisco Routers

Printer Driver - Restrict Print Job

Printer Driver - Add Custom Plug-in

December 2005:

Auto Print, Redirect Printing and Save As Printer Driver Samples

November 2005:

Message Capture Service Sample - Capture Printer Driver messages from a serivce

October 2005:

Programmatically set and restore defaults - Programmatically set and restore default printer settings for the current user or system wide programmatically

Message Capture OCX - New StopCapture method, new events and more

September 2005:

Silent Installation samples and Version number added to DEVMODE

August 2005:

TIFF JPEG support - Black Ice printer drivers generate type 7 JPEG compressed TIFF files.

July 2005:

Ignore Application Devmode feature - Force the Black Ice printer drivers to ignore printer settings stored within the printed document!  No more problems with Microsoft Excel, Word, etc. storing DPI values which are different than the Black Ice printer DPI setting.

June 2005:

AutoPrint DLL and OCX Controls Released! - Programmatically convert Microsoft Office and PDF files without any user interaction!

May 2005:

Enhanced Redirect Printing for the Black Ice Printer Drivers - Now developers can forward print jobs to multiple printers and generate a log file containing detailed information about the forwarded print jobs

April 2005:

Restrict which applications can print to the Black Ice printer drivers - Developers can restrict the Black Ice printer drivers to accept print jobs only from their own custom applications!

March 2005:

Custom Plug-in Support added to the Black Ice Printer Drivers - Allows developers to call functions from a DLL at each phase of printings, useful for job authorization, messaging, and more

February 2005:

ASP Printer Driver Sample - Demonstrates printing to the Black Ice printer driver from ASP based scripts, includes a new message capture OCX for ASP environments

Enhanced AutoPrint and BatchConverter Samples - Enhanced samples demonstrate how to programmatically print using Acrobat 6

January 2005:

Printer Driver INI file generating utility - Automatically generate an INI file for use in your custom printer driver installation.

December 2004:

Additional Features in the Version 9.0 Printer Drivers - In addition to increased printing speed, the 9.0 Black Ice printer drivers include several powerful features including an enhanced, unified messaging interface and updates to the group file.

November 2004:

Faster Printer Drivers released - The Black Ice printer driver file generation speed has been increased in version 9.0 of the printer drivers.

October 2004:

MSI Install Released - A sample MSI Installation is provided in the latest RTK which can be used as a starting point to create custom MSI installs for the Black Ice printer drivers.

September 2004:

Controlling Print Jobs using the BlackIceDEVMODE Controls - The BlackIceDEVMODE controls can be used to control printjobs, such as pausing and aborting jobs, as well as gathering information about print jobs.

August 2004:

ColorPlus Printer Driver Released - New Black Ice printer driver combines the functionality of both the Color and PDF Black Ice printer drivers in a single printer!
VB Install - New VB install included in the RTK demonstrates how to install the Black Ice printer driver using a package other than Install Shield
Rename the Port Monitor - the Black Ice printer driver port monitor can now be renamed

July 2004:

"One Function Install" - New one function install added to version 8.70 of the Black Ice printer drivers allows developers to add a Black Ice printer driver to a system with a single function call
HTTP Printing Announced - The Black Ice printer Drivers support printing via Web interface

June 2004:

Append PDF feature for PDF Printer Drivers: Append multiple documents to create a single output PDF file.
Custom Command Line Parameter: Pass a custom command line parameter to applications launched by the Black Ice printer driver.

April 2004:

Barcode Add-On Announced:  Optional add-on to the Black Ice printers allows for programmatic barcode generation on any printed file.
New File Formats for Win 9X drivers:  GIF, PNG, HTML, and Brooktrout and Dialogic specific formats

March 2004:

Bates Numbering:  Add custom, incrementing numbers to every printed page
Environment Variable Parsing:  Access and create environment variable subdirectories for filename generation, such as <<TEMP>>/New
Add Space Feature for Text Output:  Toggle whether extra spaces are added or not for text output.  Usually used for applications such as excel, to differentiate cells.
Ability to change the name of the BI_Group.ini file

January 2004:

Batch Converter Expanded:  The new batch converter add on for the printer drivers can now monitor a directory and automatically convert supported files into images.

December 2003:

HTML Printer Drivers:  Create HTML pages with embedded image files in one step
GIF Support Added:  GIF support added to the Black Ice Color Printer Drivers
New Batch Converter Introduced:  New addition to the printer driver, monitors a specified email address for emails containing attachments and automatically converts them to images using the Black Ice printer driver.

September 2003:

Printer driver profiles - Create printer driver profiles which can be saved and recalled allowing the creation of task/application specific printer settings
Custom command line parameters - Add, remove, or rearrange the command line parameters passed by the printer driver to the started application
Restore printer defaults - The printer driver user interface now includes a button to restore the default settings to the driver
Restrict available file formats from ini file - Allows developers to hide file available file formats from their users, preventing them from using a format which is incompatible with the developed application
Pass TIFF and DIB in memory - The printer drivers can now pass a TIFF and DIB in memory directly to an application.

August 2003:

User Specific Annotations - The Black Ice printer drivers can now add user specific annotations such as Printing User name, computer name, IP Address, etc.

July 2003:

Smaller PDF footprints for the PDF Printer Drivers - The addition of the Flate compression method to the PDF Printer Drivers allows for the creation of substantially smaller generated PDF files.

Page Size Editing - Users now have the option of customizing the available page sizes for the Black Ice printer drivers.  Page sizes can be added, customized, or removed entirely

PNG and Hardware Specific formats - The Black Ice printer drivers now support the PNG format as well as hardware specific output file formats, such as Dialogic TIFF, NMS TIFF and Brooktrout TIFF.

Maximum resolution raised to 3000 DPI - Using custom resolution settings, the Black Ice printer drivers now support printing at 3000 DPI.

June 2003:

Optimized RAW Data Type - Printing using the RAW data type has been optimized for faster printing results

May 2003:

Windows Server 2003 Support - The Black Ice Terminal Server printer drivers now support the entire Windows Server 2003 family

Color PDF Support - The Black Ice PDF printer drivers now include color support, allowing the creation of either color or black and white PDF output.

April 2003:

Raw Data Type Added - The Black Ice Printer Drivers now include the option of printing using either the RAW or EMF data type.  The RAW data type can be especially useful when printing in certain situations.  Also, when using the RAW data type, the Black Ice printers can be shared across a network.

March 2003:

Delphi Samples - The Black Ice printer driver resource toolkits now include Delphi samples which demonstrate how to use the printer drivers with Delphi.

January 2003:

Real-time printer driver hook - Print Job properties can be changed on the fly using the Real Time printer driver hook.

Custom User Interface: - The user interface for the Black Ice printer drivers can be customized, allowing developers to provide restrict their users from changing settings in the printer drivers.

Unicode support - Unicode text output is available in the Windows NT/Windows 2000/Windows XP printer drivers.

Auto-Print technology - Allows developers to build applications which can convert MS Office documents such as Word, Excel, Power Point and Adobe PDF files without user intervention.