Color commands

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Important

The modern print platform is Windows' preferred means of communicating with printers. We recommend that you use Microsoft's IPP inbox class driver, along with Print Support Apps (PSA), to customize the print experience in Windows 10 and 11 for printer device development.

For more information, see Modern print platform and the Print support app design guide.

This topic describes the color commands for printing, and it contains the following sections:

  • Commands for selecting primary background colors

  • Commands for controlling printer palettes

  • Commands for selecting pattern brushes

All commands are specified using the command entry format.

Commands for selecting primary background colors

The printer commands in the following table are used by printers that do not support programmable color palettes, such as planar color printers (for example, dot matrix printers) and some palette printers (for example, early ink jet printers).

Command Description Comments
CmdSelectBlackColor Command to select black background color. Optional
CmdSelectBlueColor Command to select blue background color. Optional
CmdSelectCyanColor Command to select background cyan color. Optional
CmdSelectGreenColor Command to select green background color. Optional
CmdSelectMagentaColor Command to select magenta background color. Optional
CmdSelectRedColor Command to select red background color. Optional
CmdSelectYellowColor Command to select yellow background color. Optional
CmdSelectWhiteColor Command to select background white color. Optional

Commands for controlling printer palettes

The printer commands in the following table are used by printers that support programmable palettes for both foreground (text and vector) printing and for raster printing.

Command Description Comments
CmdBeginPaletteDef Command to initialize a color palette definition. Optional. If not specified, no initialization of palette definitions is needed.
CmdEndPaletteDef Command to end a palette definition. Optional. If not specified, no command is required to end a palette definition.

The Order attribute can be specified. If it is not, the Order attribute associated with the most recently executed option selection command for the ColorMode feature is used.
CmdBeginPaletteReDef Command to initialize a color palette redefinition. Optional. If not specified, no initialization of palette redefinitions is needed.
CmdEndPaletteReDef Command to end a palette redefinition. Optional. If not specified, no command is required to end a palette redefinition.
CmdDefinePaletteEntry Command to define a palette entry. Required if the printer supports palettes.

In 24 BPP mode, Unidrv allows palettes for which PaletteSize is 1.

This allows GPD developers to implement a direct RGB color selection command for their devices. To do so, set PaletteSize to 1, and specify the selection color command in the CmdDefinePaletteEntry command. The CmdSelectPaletteEntry command must also be specified but can be defined as a NULL command.
CmdRedefinePaletteEntry Command to redefine a palette entry. Optional. If not specified, CmdDefinePaletteEntry is used to redefined palette entries.
CmdSelectPaletteEntry Command to select a palette entry as the current color. Required if the printer supports palettes.

Commands for selecting pattern brushes

The printer commands in the following table are used by printers that support downloading and selecting pattern brushes.

Command Description Comments
CmdDownloadPattern Command to deliver a brush pattern to the printer. Optional. If specified, CmdSelectPattern must also be specified.
CmdSelectBlackBrush Command to a solid black brush as the current brush. Required if the printer supports brushes.
CmdSelectPattern Command to select a downloaded brush pattern. Optional. If specified, CmdDownloadPattern must also be specified.
CmdSelectWhiteBrush Command to select a solid white brush as the current brush. Optional