Bidirectional communication with Unidrv questions

The enormity of information related to Unidrv, bidi, language and port monitors has gotten me confused. I’m fairly certain that Unidrv does not support bidi “out of the box” so to speak. I believe I will need to write and install a Language Monitor along with my GPD. The Language Monitor should be necessary to process requests from drivers/applications and handle responses from the printer.

Will I need to write a Port Monitor so that unsolicited messages are passed up to my Language Monitor, or will Microsoft’s UsbMon and TcpMon suffice?
Do I really need to include bi-directional schema extensions, or is that just for WSD Ports?

>Monitor, or will Microsoft’s UsbMon and TcpMon suffice?

If the device is compliant to the USB Printer spec - then USBMON is enough.

If the device is compiant with “TCP/IP Printing” RFC (also called “lpd”) - then TcpMon is enough.

Port monitor is only about means of communication to the printer, i.e. a kind of pipe. The rest - i.e. the command language of the printer - is above it.


Maxim S. Shatskih
Microsoft MVP on File System And Storage
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

Alright, that’s really promising!

Thanks for the info.