Q: We are looking for a solution that would allow us to incorporate in
our application and allow our users to print to PDF directly.
Some of the basic requirements for the tool would be -
It is essential that we can control the output programmatically at
times without bringing up a Save dialog. (We call this the unattended
mode.)
The solution should be able to handle unicode characters in the text
as well as in the file names.
The solution should be capable of high quality output, although that
is a subjective test that the team has decided and I cannot specify it
as a quantitative requirement.
Installation: We should be able to install the printer driver as part
of installation script.
Support for Win XP, Vista and 7 (32 and 64 for all ) is required.
Licensing: We should not have to install any third party tool (such as
PS2PDF modules like Ghostscript) other than your tool.
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A: Do you need to implement a custom virtual printer driver (with
custom GUI, branding, installer, etc), or you are looking for a
programmatic solution to convert from any printable document to PDF,
XPS, etc?
In the latter case you could use ‘pdftron.PDF.Convert’ PDFNet add-on
as shown in Convert sample project (http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/
samplecode.html#Convert). You could install the virtual printer using
a custom name, however because this driver is designed primarily for
programmatic use so there is no GUI, Save dialog box, etc.
In case you would like to implement a full driver (with custom
options, GUI, branding, Save As dialog, etc) you would need PDFNet SDK
as well as PDFTron Virtual Driver SDK. PDFTron Virtual Driver SDK
includes full source for a complete end-user driver, installer,
documentation, etc. Because the Virtual Driver SDK includes source
code, it is not available for direct evaluation. You can download one
of pre-complied sample drivers using the following links:
32-bit Windows PDF/XPS/SVG Creator: http://www.pdftron.com/downloads/PDFTronCreator32.exe
64-bit Windows PDF/XPS/SVG Creator: http://www.pdftron.com/downloads/PDFTronCreator64.exe
Please note that this precompiled sample is a bit outdated. The newer
versions of PDFNet SDK include numerous improvements. Neither PDFNet
SDK nor ‘PDFTron Virtual Driver SDK’ depend on Ghostscript, PS2PDF or
any other third party components. The drivers are supported on all 32
and 64-bit Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2003 Server, and
Windows 2008 Server. All drivers support Unicode filenames as well as
Unicode content.