DriverCategory v4 Manifest directives

Question

Hi,

I was going through "developing-v4-print-drivers" document and came accross DriverConfig Section (Section 7.2.1) table describing Manifest directives. "DriverCategory" directive has 5 options PrintFax.Printer, PrintFax.Fax, PrintFax.Printer.File, PrintFax.Printer.Virtual, PrintFax.Printer.Service.From option names it sounds like driver is printing to a Printer or Fax device, File, Virtual Printer, or Printer Service. I could not find any documentation describing more about those options.

I am looking at metro solution for printing to a not printing like service.

I would appreciate help in providing me more details on above options.

Thanks,
Rajiv

Answer 1

Rajiv,

The DriverCategory directive does not cause any functional change in the behavior of the driver. It is purely metadata that we use for the purposes of categorization, UI appearance, etc. For example, the Microsoft XPS Document Writer specifies PrintFax.Printer.File, since it is used to generate files. We change the icon to indicate this in the Metro style print dialog.

Thanks!

Justin

Answer 2

Rajiv,

Justin's response correctly answers your question.  However, I am not sure if we have helped you get the solution you need.

I would like to help guide you in getting the best solution for Windows 8.  Will you please you provide more details on what you are trying accomplish? 

Thanks,

Frank

Answer 3

Frank/Justin,

Thanks for your responses. I understand that driver UI behaviour will be same. However, I am kind of looking into application for capturing job and delivering it to cloud. I would like to do this in natural print path. I am not looking at user first prints to a file and uses metro app to post that job to cloud. I am looking for something equivalent to port monitor in v4 driver where job is captured by a metro app and delivered to cloud without user intervention. DriverCategory PrintFax.Printer.Service sounded close to what I was looking at. Here is what I came accorss from MS site http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc244841(v=PROT.13).aspx "PRINTER_DRIVER_CATEGORY_SERVICE" which means printer driver intended to use with a print service. Where print service is describe on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/831cd729-be7c-451e-b729-bd8d84ce4d24(v=prot.13)#service_printer page.

I would appreciate some guidence or pointer to some sample application.

Thanks,
Rajiv

Answer 4

Rajiv,

It is nice to see someone using the protocol documentation, especially since it is a huge engineering effort to create and update these documents.

You may have noticed that what you cited is the only reference in the entire protocol document.  This is because the attribute does not affect the protocol it is simply used for the user interface as Justin pointed out.

It also seems that you have a solid grasp of your options with respect to a v4 printer driver.

If Metro is your target you want to create an experience where the user seamlessly transitions without going through the print work flow the Share contract is a better choice.

If both Metro and desktop are required or you actually want the print work flow a v4 printer driver with the solution as you describe is the best choice. The user experience in Metro for printing is engineered around the user so it was a conscious choice that a v4 driver cannot force UI on to the user. So collecting information for things like; online service account, billing or post processing will need a separate application.  This flow ends up smooth if you have a file association.  When the user 'prints' they will get a notification and can choose to launch the document (with your application) to finish the work flow or to deal with it in the future.  There is guidance on developing v4 print drivers and on Metro file associations.

If is a print scenario and the default Metro print options are enough you could build a v3 driver.  We recommend one of the above options.  If you do choose a v3 driver I strongly recommend that you strictly adhere to the best practices, logorequirements and test your driver with driver isolation enabled as Metro applications do not directly load v3 drivers the print content is brokered into driver isolation. This is done to maintain our security model for Metro.

Thank-you for your explanation and hopefully one of these three options help you.

Frank

Answer 5

Thanks! Frank

This is very good information. I will go through all links.

Rajiv