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Adding Print-To-PDF Functionality To Your Applications

Learn how to add Print2eDoc SDK's print-to-PDF and print-to-image functionality to your applications.

Shivaranjini M.

Important

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Print2eDoc is a desktop application that allows you to convert any document to PDF and popular image formats. Print2eDoc does this by using a Windows application that can open and print the document. Instead of printing to a regular printer, the print data is captured by Print2eDoc, which is installed as a software printer, and then the document is converted to a format such as PDF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WMF, EMF or SVG.

Print2eDoc SDK is a software development kit that allows you to convert documents using Print2eDoc (the printer application) entirely through code!

Using Print2eDoc SDK, you can add Print2eDoc's document creation capabilities to your applications. In this article, you will learn more about this.

Programming with Print2eDoc SDK

When you convert documents using Print2eDoc SDK, you

Create a Print2eDoc printer object (IgtPrint2eDoc).
Specify conversion settings, such as the document that needs to be converted and location where the output document needs to be saved.
Fire the print command of the printer object.

See the article Document File Format Conversion With Print2eDoc SDK (Part 1) for sample code.

If your existing code prints to paper and you would like replace it with the functionality to create electronic documents, then you need to make only minor modifications to the code. Just set Print2eDoc as the default printer before you call the "print" command and restore the default printer when the document has been converted.

As Print2eDoc is a software printer, the print spooler service needs to be running on the computer. Otherwise, documents cannot be converted.

Deployment Kit

If you have developed your program using Print2eDoc SDK, you need to bundle both Print2eDoc as well as the Print2eDoc SDK infrastructure in the installation setup program of your application. To facilitate this, Print2eDoc SDK comes with a deployment kit.

In the installation folder of Print2eDoc SDK, you will find a folder named "Deployment_Kit" containing the files of this deployment kit. Include this folder in the installation program of your application.

Your setup program should copy this folder to a location on the target system and then execute an application named "Print2eDocDeploy.exe" in the folder. This program installs Print2eDoc and the Print2eDoc SDK support files on the target system. The program is a silent installer, which allows you to install Print2eDoc and its SDK without any prompts.

Profile Configurator

Print2eDoc uses what are known as "document creation profiles" to store specific document creation settings for subsequent reuse and modification. If your application creates documents using specific settings, you can store those settings in named document creation profiles and ship them as part of the deployment kit.

Document creation profiles are stored in files named "WatermarkProfiles.xml" and "Profiles.gtf" in the deployment kit folder. Using an application named "ProfileConfigUtility.exe" (available in a folder named "ProfileConfigurator"), you can create or modify profiles to suit your application's requirements.

When these modified files are shipped, the profiles you created or modified will be available as built-in profiles. If you wish to protect any profile from modification (or make it read-only), just enclose the profile name in square brackets. For example: [Default Settings].

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