Developing a WIA Scanner Driver

A WIA scanner driver developer can create either a WIA microdriver or a WIA minidriver.

Microdriver

A microdriver is a small driver that supports a simple flatbed scanner. This driver type can be developed more quickly than a minidriver, but has the following restrictions:

  • Microdrivers are limited to flatbed scanners only.

  • Microdrivers provide only minimal document feeder support (no duplex operations).

  • Microdrivers provide a limited number of resolutions in dots per inch (dpi): 75, 100, 150, 200, 300, and 600.

  • Microdrivers support only the WiaImgFmt_BMP and WiaImgFmt_MEMORYBMP image formats. For more information about these image formats, see the Microsoft Windows SDK.

  • Microdrivers do not support three-pass scanning (used by older color scanners to capture a color image using color filters).

For more information about developing microdrivers, see Creating a WIA Microdriver.

Minidriver

A minidriver is a full WIA minidriver. See Creating a WIA Minidriver section for more information.

This section contains additional information about the following topics:

WIA Scanner Item Tree Layout

Adding Document Feeder Support

Page Size and Orientation

TWAIN Compatibility