v4 print driver -- customized print preference

Question

Is Metro Style app the only way of custom print preferences for v4 print driver?

Is it possible to implement a customized GUI like UNIDRV ui replacement as we did in v3 print driver?

---

spider

Answer 1

Hi Edward,

V4 print drivers always use applications to support custom print preferences. In the desktop we call these apps printer extensions. When using Metro style apps, we call these Metro style device apps. These apps are pretty easy to develop and distribute, so I'd encourage you to check out the materials we released at the BUILD conference.

V4 print drivers do not support any form of UI plug-ins, so there is no way to provide a traditional UnidrvUI replacement UI.

Thanks!

Justin

Answer 2

Hi Justin,

According to the descriptions in "developing-v4-print-driver.docx", neither printer extension nor Metro style device app can access DEVMODE property bag. Thus for those options that are not easily expressed in a GPD file (for example, the numeric values required to define custom page scaling options), how should we do in v4 printer driver's custom GUI? Should we implement completePrintCapabilities() in JavaScript constraint first and then hard code those related print tickets in printer extension and Metro style device app?

Thanks

---

spider

Answer 3

Yep, implement completePrintCapabilities in your JavaScript constraints and then work forward from that. You should definitely NOT hard code any PrintTickets in your apps, though. You need to look for the PrintCapabilities and build the PrintTicket based on the data specified in there.