UniDrv (Universal Printer Driver or Unidriver) is a

GDI GDI may refer to: Science and technology * Gasoline direct injection, a type of fuel injection * Graphics Device Interface, a component of Microsoft Windows * Guanosine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor, a protein Organisations * Gabriel Dumont I ...

-based

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

universal

printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * James Printer (1640 ...

driver and architecture for non-

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

printers. It is used to simplify driver development of non-PostScript printers (also called Winprinters) for printer manufacturers. ''Unidrv'' allows the creation of a printer-specific minidriver in the form of a GPD (Generic Printer Description) file, similar to a PPD file, which is much simpler than

kernel mode In computer science, hierarchical protection domains, often called protection rings, are mechanisms to protect data and functionality from faults (by improving fault tolerance) and malicious behavior (by providing computer security). Computer ...

driver development. Unidrv was introduced in

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

and replaced the Raster Device Driver (RASDD) interface used in

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the data server and personal workstation markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, and was released to manufacturing on July 3 ...

and earlier versions.

Overview

The concept behind Unidrv is that a complete printer driver need not be written by the hardware manufacturer; only a device-specific minidriver is required that uses the core printing functionality of the Unidrv engine. A minidriver can be a customization file, or a plug-in, that allows special rendering functions or customized UI options. Unidrv supports non-

printers driven by PCL and PCL-like

page description language In digital printing, a page description language (PDL) is a computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap (or generally raster graphics). An overlapping term is printer control ...

Driver file details

The Unidriver is implemented as a set of DLL and GPD files along with other printer-specific support files: * ''UniDrv.dll'' is the printer graphics driver file for printer languages based on

raster graphics upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

, including most

inkjet Inkjet printing is a type of printer (computing), computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper or plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range f ...

and

dot matrix A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned Array data structure, array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and pri ...

printer language In digital printing, a page description language (PDL) is a computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap (or generally raster graphics). An overlapping term is printer control lan ...

s. * ''UniDrvUI.dll'' is the configuration file. It displays the user interface for ''UniDrv.dll''. * ''UniRes.dll'', ''StdNames.gpd'', ''TtfSub.gpd'' and some other support files. * ''Raster minidriver'', which has the file name extension {{mono, .GPD, is the data file, and is also called the characterization file. The file name depends on the printer or printer family. Newer ''Unidrv''-based

printer driver In computers, a printer driver or a print processor is a piece of software on a computer that converts the data to be printed to a format that a printer can understand. The purpose of printer drivers is to allow applications to do printing with ...

s from some printer vendors, e.g.

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

, may contain many other support files to allow support for more printer-specific options.

Unidrv capabilities

The ''Unidriver'' is also called the raster driver because it supports raster (bitmap) graphics printing and is compatible with many printers. This driver supports the following features: * Color printing at various depths, such as 4 bits per pixel (bpp), 8 bpp, and 24 bpp. * Scalable

TrueType TrueType is an Computer font#Outline fonts, outline font standardization, standard developed by Apple Inc., Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe Inc., Adobe's PostScript fonts#Type 1, Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the ...

and

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...

fonts, device fonts (including double-byte), grayscale printing,

font substitution Font substitution is the process of using one typeface in place of another when the intended typeface either is not available or does not contain glyphs for the required characters. Font substitution can be aided by: * classifying fonts into ...

run-length encoding Run-length encoding (RLE) is a form of lossless data compression in which ''runs'' of data (consecutive occurrences of the same data value) are stored as a single occurrence of that data value and a count of its consecutive occurrences, rather th ...

(RLE), Tag Image File Format (

TIFF Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is w ...

) version 4.0, and Delta Row Compression (DRC). * An extension interface that allows printer manufacturers to extend and customize the driver for specific models. * Vector graphics languages HP-GL/2 and PCL-XL, monochrome, and color.

Determining if the printer driver is Unidrv-based

To determine whether a driver is ''Unidrv''-based, the following steps need to be taken on Windows: # Click the ''Start button'', and then open the ''Printers'' folder. # From the ''File'' menu, click ''Server Properties''. # Click the ''Drivers'' tab. # Select a driver, and then click ''Properties''. # Observe the driver list in the ''Driver Properties'' dialog box. If ''UniDrv.dll'' appears on the list of files, the driver is ''Unidrv''-based.

Future

Starting with

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, Microsoft intends XPSDrv to succeed Unidrv. The XPSDrv printer driver extends Microsoft's GDI-based, printer driver architecture to support consuming

Open XML Paper Specification Open XML Paper Specification (also referred to as OpenXPS) is an open specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format. Microsoft developed it as the XML Paper Specification (XPS). In June 2009, Ecma International adop ...

(XPS) documents and is more modular and extensible. With an XPSDrv printer driver, the XPS Document format is used as a spool file format and as a document file format.

References

Microsoft Universal Printer Driver (UniDrv) MSDN References
Windows components