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TIFF Printer Driver Development Toolkit
In order to help Black Ice TIFF Printer Driver users accomplish printing and Black Ice TIFF 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 TIFF Printer Driver Resource Toolkit includes 16 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 a sample Install Shield installation script and many other tools that can reduce development time and make applications development with the Black Ice Printer Drivers much easier.
The tools and samples included in the Resource Toolkit will help in the following areas:
- Printer driver user interface customization.
- Custom printer driver installations.
- Change printer settings.
- Integrate applications with the printer driver.
- Provide access to features and technologies
available with Black Ice products only.
Printer driver user interface customization.
The dialog box templates and other resources used by Black Ice TIFF 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.
Additional details are available in the
October 2003 Black Ice Developer's Newsletter
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.
Custom printer driver installations.
The Resource Toolkit comes with an Install Shield project that
installs and configures the printer driver. The Install Shield
project is provided as a starting point for creating user specific
printer driver installations.
Additionally, the documentation included in the Resource Toolkit
contains detailed information on how to install the printer driver
using installation packages other than Install Shield (packages like
Wise and Microsoft Installer).
The
Install Shield project included in the Resource Toolkit was
generated with Install Shield 6.31
Black Ice TIFF 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 200 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.
Integrate applications with the printer driver.
When
the Black Ice TIFF 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 application can capture printer driver messages sent by the printer driver's messaging interface.
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the application can check the content of the group file generated by the printer driver.
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the printer driver can launch the application and pass command line parameters.
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 TIFF 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.
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