The Developer Edition of PEERNET.DRV enables you to do the following:

1. Perform thread-safe batch printing and workflow management

By allowing all the driver settings to be specified in a script file that is used to configure the driver when the job is submitted for printing.

By providing job synchronization events that are used to coordinate the work being done by the driver and your application.

The following events can be signaled by the driver:
• Driver settings have been read
• Document has been spooled
• Job start
• End of page
• File close
• End of job

An OLE automation sample is included with the Developer Edition. To see how the script file and the job synchronization events are used together, see the Visual Basic sample called "Print automation of Word documents using Visual Basic" that is provided with this product.

2. Call your own functions contained in DLLs at five key points during the printing process:

• Job submission
• Job start
• End of page
• File close
• End of job

During job submission, you can call a function (with a pre-defined interface) in a DLL, and use PEERNET.DRV control strings to store user-gathered data, alter driver settings, or even cancel the job before it is queued.

After job submission, you can call four more functions (in the same DLL, or in different DLLs). You can allocate a runtime environment for any DLL that you load after job submission. A pointer to this environment is passed to all function calls within the same DLL. In addition, you can pass any other parameters that you want (for example, you may want to pass the $(JobStatus) variable, which is set to 0 if a job has been cancelled, or 1 if the job completed successfully).

A sample demonstrating these techniques is included with the Developer Edition. To see how to call your own functions in DLLs, see the C++ sample called "User Exits sample" that is provided with this product.

Both the End User and Developer versions of PEERNET.DRV support the following functionality:

Launch external commands (.EXEs, .COM, .BAT, ShellExecute()) at 4 key points during the printing process:
• Job start
• End of page
• File close
• End of job

Auto-registration (no prompt for license key), allowing you to silently license any number of machines. This feature is compatible with both SMS and Terminal Services.

Automatic support for other platforms when installing as a network printer.

Control strings can be embedded directly (inline) in Microsoft Word (without the PEERNET.DRV CommandBox ActiveX control). Combined with the built-in email capability of PEERNET.DRV, this enables you to perform an automated mail merge.

A mail merge sample is included with the product. To see how to use PEERNET.DRV control strings to perform a mail merge, see the Microsoft Word sample called "Merge Sample.doc" that is provided with this product.