February Newsletter Page 3

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Developer Newsletter

Text Box: The Black Ice Printer Driver stores the settings for the “Start Application” feature in the “Bi*ini**.ini” file. By modifying the LaunchFlags variable of the “Bi*ini**.ini” file you can turn on or off the “Start Application” feature and change the parameters of the feature. A description of the flag settings for the “Start Application” feature is listed below in figure 1.1. If you want to start an application

$Text Box: After Printing and Pass Parameters to the application then you would set the “LaunchFlags” variable to 13. (BLF_LAUNCHAPP+BLF_PASSPARAMETERS+BLF_STARTNORMAL). For this example the settings in the “Bi*ini**.ini“ file of the printer driver would be: LaunchFlags=13 ApplicationPath= C:\Windows\Notepad.exe$ Text Box: The “ApplicationPath” variable stores the path and the name of the application. In this case the notepad application will start after printing a document, and the specified parameters in the pass parameters dialog box will be passed to the notepad application. NOTE: *- These characters will vary depending on which printer driver is installed

Text Box: The “ApplicationPath” variable stores the path and the name of the application. In this case the notepad application will start after printing a document, and the specified parameters in the pass parameters dialog box will be passed to the notepad application. NOTE: *- These characters will vary depending on which printer driver is installed

Tips and Tricks - How to programmatically set the Application Path and Name in the “Start Application” feature.

BLF_LAUNCHAPP	0x00000001	Launch an application
BLF_STARTBEFOREPRINT	0x00000002	Sets the value of the 'Start Before Printing' radio button
BLF_PASSPARAMETERS	0x00000004	Sets the value of the 'Pass Parameters' checkbox
BLF_STARTNORMAL	0x00000008	Sets the value of the 'Normal' radio button. The driver will start the application In a Normal window
BLF_STARTMINIMIZED	0x00000010	The driver will start the application In a Minimized window
BLF_STARTHIDDEN	0x00000020	Sets the value of the 'Hidden' radio button. The driver will start the application Hidden.
BLF_DONOLAUNCHINUSERCONTEXT	0x00000040	the start application won't be launch in the user's security context, otherwise the application starts in the user's security context.

(Use Document Name from page )

issue in a few steps. When printing is done automatically, the printing application knows the name of the file which is going to be printed. Before printing, the application must read the name of the source file. Once you have the name of the source file, use the BlackIceDEVMODE.dll or BlackIceDEVMODE.ocx controls to change the filename generation method to “Use exact filename”

and set the output file name using the SetImageFileName() function to the desired file name. Cutting the extension of the original file, and replacing it with the file extension for the current file type can create the desired file name. Use the GetFileExtension() function to get the current file extension for the currently used file format.

Using these simple steps it is possible to create images having the source document’s name. The

latest Black Ice Printer Driver RTK includes new samples written in C#, VB.NET and Delphi which demonstrates the above steps and can be used as a starting point for implementing this functionality in your own application.