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The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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Since Windows is a multitasking environment, more than one application may
create a device context for a printer at the same time. This means GDI may
direct the printer driver to initialize more than one physical device. The
printer driver sets the dpDCManage member in its GDIINFO structure to
specify how it will manage these requests. The driver can specify one of the
following methods:
 
♦  Driver allows multiple device contexts. It creates a new PDEVICE for each
   device context that specifies a new device and filename pair, but uses
   the same PDEVICE for any subsequent device contexts that specify the same
   device and filename pair.
 
♦  Driver allows multiple device contexts, but it creates a new PDEVICE for
   each device context regardless of whether the device and filename pairs
   are the same.
 
♦  Driver allows multiple device contexts but only if all device contexts
   have unique device and filename pairs. The driver creates a PDEVICE for
   each device context. The driver returns an error on any attempt to create
   a second device context with an existing device and filename pair.
 
♦  Driver allows multiple device contexts, but only creates one PDEVICE. All
   device contexts share the same PDEVICE regardless of the device and
   filename pairs.
 
♦  Driver allows only one device context. The driver returns an error on any
   attempt to create a second device context.
 
Printer drivers normally allow multiple device contexts but create new
PDEVICE structures for each device context. With separate PDEVICE
structures, the driver can maintain information about multiple print jobs
without one job affecting the other.
 
 
                                      ♦