Replacing Driver-Supplied Property Sheet Pages

The IPrintCoreUI2 COM Interface provides four methods that a Pscript5 UI plug-in running on Windows XP and later versions of Windows operating system must use when it intends to fully replace the core driver's standard UI pages. (The term core driver refers to either the Unidrv or Pscript5 printer driver.) These methods are as follows:

IPrintCoreUI2::EnumConstrainedOptions

IPrintCoreUI2::GetOptions

IPrintCoreUI2::SetOptions

IPrintCoreUI2::WhyConstrained

These methods are supported only during the execution of the UI plug-in's IPrintOemUI::DocumentPropertySheets and IPrintOemUI::DevicePropertySheets methods and their property sheet callback routines. A UI plug-in supports these methods to display its own user interface. When not supported, these methods return E_NOTIMPL.

The core driver displays its own property sheet UI in two circumstances--for DrvDocumentPropertySheets, and for DrvDevicePropertySheets. The first method displays properties that apply only to documents (document-sticky properties), while the second method displays properties that apply to a device (device- or printer-sticky properties).

The core driver remembers the type of property sheet it handles (and therefore, the mode -- document-sticky or printer-sticky). The core driver saves that state information in a structure (the OEMUIOBJ structure) it creates for the UI instance. When the core driver calls a plug-in's interface methods, it passes a pointer to an OEMUIOBJ structure, so that when a plug-in calls back to the core driver from IPrintCoreUI2::EnumConstrainedOptions, IPrintCoreUI2::GetOptions, IPrintCoreUI2::SetOptions, or IPrintCoreUI2::WhyConstrained, these methods pass the pointer back to the core driver, which is then able to determine the mode.

For IPrintCoreUI2::EnumConstrainedOptions, IPrintCoreUI2::SetOptions, and IPrintCoreUI2::WhyConstrained, only document-sticky features are supported during the execution of IPrintOemUI::DocumentPropertySheets or its property sheet callback routine and only printer-sticky features are supported during the execution of IPrintOemUI::DevicePropertySheets or its property sheet callback routine. For IPrintCoreUI2::SetOptions, any feature whose stickiness does not match the current sticky mode should be ignored. When either IPrintCoreUI2::EnumConstrainedOptions or IPrintCoreUI2::WhyConstrained is called for a feature whose stickiness does not match the current sticky mode, the method should return E_INVALIDARG.

For IPrintCoreUI2::GetOptions, both document-sticky and printer-sticky features are supported in document-sticky mode (that is, when IPrintOemUI::DocumentPropertySheets or its property sheet callback routine are running), but only printer-sticky features are supported in printer-sticky mode (when IPrintOemUI::DevicePropertySheets or its property sheet callback routine are running).