Virtual Printer Driver for Windows

Question

can you please help me with the following questions...

• If I need a virtual printer that will convert a PostScript stream to a different format, do I have to implement a virtual printer from scratch or implement a rendering plug-in?
• The rendering plug-in seems to support only certain customizations. Also the data invariably goes to the spooler which is not needed in this case.
• If I implement a virtual printer driver does it completely replace the Microsoft PostScript Driver or the Microsoft Universal Driver?
• Since my driver is virtual, does it matter if I write a PostScript compliant or a Universal Driver compliant one?
• Any other method to convert a printed document to a custom document format apart from implementing a virtual printer driver? Can I hook on as a port monitor or something? From what I could understand I guess not.

Answer 1

What you need is a port monitor. You can create a virtual printer using the Microsoft Postscript driver found in the WDK. You don't need to provide any code for this part, just an INF and PPD file to describe your virtual printer. Once you have that working and installed, users will then see your virtual printer when they print from an app. This printer will produce a stream of Postscript like any standard Postscript printer, which will then be sent to the printer's port monitor.

Now add a port monitor to handle converting the Postscript stream to whatever format you need. Port monitors are considerably easier to deal with than print drivers.

EDIT: Andy points out in the comments that v4 (ie, Win8) print drivers don't support custom port monitors. However, v3 drivers will still work in Win8.