Can anyone shed some light on how one would generate a UFM or GTT file? Do I convert an existing font file, perhaps a TTF to this format? I've read this and understand that they are just binary files containing structs. I don't really think I should be handcrafting these though... so is there a tool?
I've built the text-only driver sample (WinDDK) which comes with some GTT and UFM files but obviously I need to define my own font metrics. Some of my fonts are of a different cpi that the UFMs provided so I don't really know how to proceed.
Edit:
My problem and not the attempted solution: I am trying to build a unidrv minidriver printer driver and I'll need to support custom fonts. If GTT/UFM is not the best route please let me know. I'd love to avoid the v3 model entirely but I have requirement to support XP SP3 through Windows 8.1. Windows 10 will be another story.
Related
I'm looking for a way to programmatically create multiple "virtual" desktops, and stream their contents to whatever.
Essentially, what macOS apis are these guys https://cindori.org/vrdesktop/ using to create those virtual desktops and additionally how do they get a video stream of it?
Just looking for guidance to the right apis/docs. No code required :)
You'll need to create a kernel extension that simulates a graphics adapter, essentially just rendering everything into a framebuffer. The framebuffer can then be exported as a video stream or whatever you choose.
You can find example source codes to look at here:
https://github.com/tSoniq/displayx
https://github.com/andreacremaschi/Syphon-virtual-screen/tree/develop
https://github.com/mkernel/EWProxyFramebuffer
https://code.google.com/archive/p/ioproxyvideofamily/source/default/source
Please note that these projects are not up to date in terms of supporting the latest macOS versions. Later versions of macOS have introduced things such as mandatory kernel extension signing that makes it harder for "hobby-developers" to produce something that can be shared for free on the internet in terms of kernel extensions. It also makes it harder for malware authors, which is the upside.
So take a look at these source repositories and you'll find your guidance - but don't expect them to be complete solutions.
Well.... the question sort of says it all. If possible I would like to be able to do so from a Linux or macOS environment, but I have virtualized Windows if need be.
Thanks in advance!
There is no general answer for this because different installers/applications use different storage methods. You should first try to identify the author of the installer software by looking for clues in the version information and maybe with a hex editor.
My first suggestion is to try 7-zip, it can extract from NSIS based installers and some MSI based installers.
If the setup was created with Inno Setup then you can try this.
If all else fails, try Universal Extractor but even that will fail for obscure and custom .exe files.
It depends. Assuming you have a PE file (windows executable), you can use a resource editor https://stefansundin.github.io/xn_resource_editor/ to extract icons, messages or dialog layouts. This assumes that the author of that file used the native resource system. Other data would only be available if you knew the address within the PE file, or had appropriate debug symbols. But then, you must guess content type, and maybe also file size.
We have a legacy vb6 application that uses an ancient windows media player component, msdxm.ocx, to embed ultrasound (pregnancy) video's in the medical record.
This doesn't work any more on Windows 7: it has a newer version of msdxm.ocx which cannot be referenced from vb6.
The newer version of the embeddable player is wmp.dll, so we are planning to upgrade the application to the newer version for Windows 7.
Before we have to find it all out the hard way by ourselves: does someone have experience with this upgrade from msdxm.ocx to wpm.dll? Is there a list of things to consider when upgrading? Or a table to convert constants and events from the first to the second?
I haven't seen anything listing their object models side-by-side or offering any "conversion."
The msdxm.ocx was really a scriptable IE object and should not have been used in VB6 programs. Lots of people did though. Windows 7 still has this OCX but starting with Vista (or perhaps IE7?) its interfaces changed in a way that seems to prevent use in VB6 programs.
You might want to try running a tool like ActiveX Documenter aginst working versions of both libraries to assist your efforts though. The RTF output documents might be a starting point for writing your own conversion guide.
msdxm.ocx should still work if you put the OCX file in C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and register it.
I've tried on my Win7 and it works on my music player legacy app.
Don't know about Windows 8 though, but it might still be the same, MS might changed folder again then.
I want to create a virtual printer driver for Windows. How and where can I start properly? The WDK has some printing drivers examples that do not seems a good introductory. MSDN also doesn't seems to be very helpful for a novice.
There are a lot of virtual printers for Windows out there (mostly they generate PDFs), I wonder if someone could tell my how can I do the same?
Any links to the elaborating documentations are appreciated in advance.
Thanks.
When I did it (which about 12 years ago) I started with the postscript driver sample, replaced all the postscript-specific stuff (in my case, to write to a bitmap instead of generating postscript commands).
I also wrote a custom print monitor (the driver writes to the spooler, which write to a monitor): my monitor wrote to a file instead of e.g. to the parallel port.
However, printer driver architecture and/or the set of sample drivers may have changed since then.
You can look to the 'minidriver' development in the from Microsoft (Microsoft MDT), that might help depending on your exact needs. If the port you need to deal with (ie: you are going to take the data from an existing printer driver and want to process) you could look to the source code for RedMon. It doesn't support Vista/Win7 but might point you in the right direction.
This book maybe help you Developing Drivers with the Windows® Driver Foundation
A list of my links
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/driverdev.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/ddk/winddk.mspx
http://jungo.com/wdusb.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20130717135254/https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff554651.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Rory/Driver-Development-and-Much-More-With-Mike-Calligaro/
One of the drivers you mention is open-source (GPL), maybe you could explore its source or adapt it: http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator/download
Someone else already mentioned PDFCreator. Here's a more specific link to their code that's creating the printer, port and monitor. Despite being in VB, I can follow it as someone more used to C++, so I guess you can too. modPrinter.bas does the leg work. modMain.bas, from about line 28 onwards, calls into modPrinter.bas.
Create a Print Port Monitor, associate that port with a printer, and you'll get the data the printer driver sends to the port.
working example of how is it done in Cpp and java can be found here:
http://www.mms-computing.co.uk/uk/co/mmscomputing/device/printmonitor/index.php
I need to develop a print driver to print from any application into a TIFF file. Does someone know of resources or a good SDK vendor that would enable me to do that? Environment is Windows, any language.
The Microsoft Windows Driver Kit (freely available from the linked Microsoft site) has extensive documentation and examples on writing printer drivers. You can check the online printer driver page of the DDK docs before downloading it.
Edit: One commercial alternative that would probably be much quicker to deploy is VeryPDF's DocumentPrinter. It's rather pricy (currently $1500 for a developer license, $399 for a server license), but from what I've heard their support is rather good so if the price is tenable for you this may be a good option.
There's also a SDK from DirectConvert, but I couldn't find any pricing info and don't know anything about them.
Depending on your usage patterns, another option would be something like TechSmith SnagIt, which has printer capture facilities available. This is not a SDK, though.
Create a raster print driver using the Windows DDK. The sample they provide will do just fine. This will generate bitmaps, which can then be converted to TIFF using LibTiff. Your OEMSendPage function is where you'll want to convert the bitmap to TIFF and save it. If you're unfamiliar with the DDK and Windows print drivers, expect to spend quite a bit of time on this.
I have source for a driver I used to sell that does exactly what you want, but I stopped maintaining it after NT 4 so it's seriously out of date and would require some significant work to make it useful on modern Windows platforms.