Printing

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I am beginning work on implementing printing support in ReactOS. If you have any ideas or want to help with printers, it would be very much appreciated. Please leave your name and some way of getting hold of you.

There are a number of components to have code written for them in order to maintain compatibility with the existing Windows 2000/Windows XP architecture. For this reason, the implementation I am currently planning will follow that of the latter systems. Unfortunately we can use precious little from WINE.

Some things we need:

  • Print spooler components (driver winspool.drv - stubbed but out of date in WINE/ReactOS, service spoolsv.exe - I started writing one, router spoolss.dll)
  • Print processor (WinPrint.dll 'integrated into localspl.dll from Windows 2000 onwards')
  • Local print provider (localspl.dll) There is an skeletal example of a print provider in the ddk called pp, also an example in ceps.
  • Port monitors (Localmon sample in DDK; integrated into localspl.dll from Windows 2000 onwards)
  • Language monitor (see PJLMon sample in DDK)
  • PrintUI.dll (possibly at some point)
  • compstui.dll (property sheet pages etc)
  • add necessary win32k, gdi functions for print drivers (EngWritePrinter, etc.)

My initial plan is that winspool will directly call localspl.dll (the local spooler) as RPC still seems to be in it is infancy in ReactOS. However, I see that there is code in svn for RPC though I haven't had chance to play yet.

One bonus is that the Windows 2000/Windows XP print system is very modular making testing a lot easier.

Once I can use my laser printer I can write my Master's project in LaTeX on ReactOS and print it as well. Eventually I'd love to have something like FinePrint built into ReactOS

Current status

  • 09/02/07 - have started a PhD and it is currently taking a lot of time, so have halted work on the print subsystem
  • 13/07/06 - I am currently focusing on the print spooler service, spoolsrv
  • 10/08/05 - My main focus is on writing local print provider. It behaves as expected in Windows XP Professional so far so good.
  • 14/09/05 - whoah a month's gone by and localspl is all stubbed out and I've got around 1/3 of a print provider

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