Printer Driver Architecture
The port monitor manages all communication between printer drivers and physical communication ports on a Windows CE–based platform. Therefore, the printer driver does not need to support different types of printer ports explicitly. The port monitor supports serial ports, infrared ports, parallel ports, and network printing. Printer drivers should call the port monitor APIs, instead of calling low-level communication APIs directly.
Port monitor APIs take handle-based parameters. This allows multiple applications to use the APIs simultaneously.
The following table shows the port monitor functions.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| GetPrinterInfo | Retrieves information about the capabilities of a printer. |
| PrinterClose | Closes a handle to a printer. |
| PrinterOpen | Opens a handle to a printer. |
| PrinterSend | Sends blocks of data to a printer. |
| ReportPrinterStatus | Returns the status of a printer or printing operation that is in progress. |
The following table shows the functions that printer drivers must implement.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| DrvCopyBits | Translates between device-managed raster surfaces and graphics device interface (GDI) standard format bitmaps. |
| DrvDisablePDEV | Used by MGDI to notify a driver that the specified PDEV structure is no longer needed. |
| DrvDisableSurface | Used by the GDI to notify a driver that the surface created by the DrvEnableSurface function for the current device is no longer needed. |
| DrvEnableDriver | Specifies the initial driver entry point exported by the driver DLL for devices that link directly to GWES, such as display drivers and printer drivers. It fills a DRVENABLEDATA structure with the driver version number and calling addresses of functions supported by the driver |
| DrvEnablePDEV | Enables a device context for drawing and returns device metrics for the target printer or display device in a GDIINFO structure. Printer drivers call a display driver's DrvEnablePDEV function to create and initialize the device context, and then substitute the printer's device metrics before returning the device context to the GDI for bitmap rendering. |
| DrvEnableSurface | Sets up a surface to be drawn on and associates it with a specified PDEV. |
| DrvEndDoc | Called by the GDI to finish or abort a print job. |
| DrvGetModes | Lists the modes supported by a specified device. |
| DrvStartDoc | Called by the GDI to start a print job. |
| DrvStartPage | Called by the GDI to start printing the next page of a print job. |
See Also
Printer Drivers | Print Spooling | Printer Driver Samples | Printer Driver Registry Settings
Last updated on Tuesday, May 18, 2004
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