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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documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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In most cases, printer drivers are not responsible for sending bytes
directly to the output port. Instead, printer drivers call special GDI
functions to carry out the output. Depending on the options selected by the
user, those functions will route the output to a specific port, to a disk
file, across a network connection, or to a temporary file for later output
by Print Manager.
 
GDI contains functions a device driver can call to perform output. The
driver does not need to know if output is being queued or written directly
to the port. The following lists these functions, and provides a brief
description of each.
 
Function        Description
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CloseJob        Closes a print job, and enables it for printing.
 
DeleteJob       Deletes a open job, removing it from the print queue.
 
EndSpoolPage    Marks the end of a spooled page.
 
OpenJob         Opens a print job, returning a handle that the driver can
                use to write output to the job.
 
StartSpoolPage  Marks the start of a spooled page. Print Manager manages
                print jobs by printing one spooled page at a time.
 
WriteDialog     Displays a dialog box directing the user to carry out some
                action to permit printing to continue.
 
WriteSpool      Writes data to an open print job.
 
 
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