Question

I’m developing a virtual printer to accept print jobs and route them to real printers in a LAN. I’m hoping to create a postscript printer to act as a shared virtual printer to accept print jobs from the LAN, I hope to develop it through ghostscript and redmon.

If you can please let me know any online resources, examples or any tutorials on hows to create a postscript printer on windows 7.

Thank you very much, please let me know if you know anything.

Answer 1

It will be easier to use an existing PostScript printer driver (such as a generic one provided with Windows), and then instead create a port monitor. You will need to use the Windows Driver Development Kit (freely available) in order to create a port monitor. Once you have created your port monitor, you can install a printer using any driver, but tell it to communicate via a port that your monitor will intercept.

You will end up getting the exact data that would have been sent directly to the printer had it been configured to use an IP or other port instead of your port. For example, you can create a port called “ZERONE:” which is monitored by a port monitor called “Zerone Port Monitor”.

MSDN has a sample for a port monitor that interacts with infrared devices, although it will give you an idea on what you need to do so that you can communicate with other devices on a network.

Alternatively, and perhaps more hackishly, you can create a port called “C:\doc.prn”, and any document that is printed will be saved as PostScript to “C:\doc.prn” (provided that the printer driver is a PostScript driver).