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ImageMAKER Release notes:
Windows XP Printer Drivers
The following release notes are common to all our Windows XP drivers. Not all of them
will apply to all driver versions.
- Release build 140 (23 June 05)
- A small memory leak (on the order of 100 bytes per print job) was found
in the port monitor. This would result in the memory used by the spooler
to slowly increase over time.
- A little-used function (file type -1, do not produce any image output at
all) was found to cause a spooler crash.
- Licensing support was added to several builds
- Release build 139 (9 June 05)
- A long-standing obscure bug in Group 4 compression would very
occasionally result in output files expanding to fill all free space
on the disk.
- Release build 138 (1 June 05)
- A change in the way forms were handled starting in release build
127 caused a problem in the display of the form size in the document
properties sheets.
- Optionally we now create a flag file (filename.flg) on completion
of the processing of the output image file. This is used by one
client who wants to keep file processing completey separate from
the spooler.
- Release build 137 (20 April 05)
- As applications have discovered new forms available by default in
Windows 2000 and later, we have added support specifically for Rotated
Letter and Rotated A4.
- Release build 136 (9 March 05)
- Under one particular set of circumstances, the driver could decide it
had to allocate an arbitrarily large amount of memory.
- Release build 135 (21 February 05)
- Corrections were made in the handling of the DeviceCapabilities call.
- Some changes to the handling of the DEVMODE were made, notably in
reporting of supported fields and value verification, and in handling
our private DEVMODE.
- Some additional error reporting was added.
- Release build 134 (31 December 04)
- Some rationalization was done in the resources
- Release build 133 (21 December 04)
- Some rationalization of files was performed
- A new technique for logging error messages is being implemented.
- A test used to detect when a very short file is being printed was
implemented in the wrong direction. This would only affect files
less than about 1/2" in length.
- Release build 132 (02 December 04)
- A registry setting was added for one client to allow selection of
non-Fax pixel widths when generating monochrome images at 200DPI.
Normally the driver forces images near Fax resolution to be the
correct widths for fax machines.
- Release build 131 (16 August 04)
- We now build a user-mode driver as well as the kernel-mode driver.
The user-mode (V3) driver will install on machines that refuse the
kernel-mode driver because it is an "NT 4.0 print driver".
- Release build 130 (6 August 04)
- A registry setting was added for one client to allow forcing 24-bit
colour output to grey-scale
- In those builds with a removable demo stamp, one demo stamp was not
being removed. This has been corrected.
- Release build 129 (12 June 04)
- A problem with TIFF JPEG output handling mixed page sizes was found
and corrected.
- Negative or over-large copy counts caused problems; we no restrict the
driver to a range of 1 to 99 copies.
- One client build had a problem handling ResetDC.
- A problem was found when the output resolution was set to 196x196 in
one particular client build.
- Release build 128 (25 May 04)
- Small changes to one build type
- Custom build for one customer
- Release build 127 (20 April 04)
- One new feature was added to one build.
- There was one particular set of circumstances which would result in an
invalid handle being used and closed. While probably benign, this was
corrected.
- A bug that would cause a major failure occasionally was found in the
additional client added at build 123. Some additional work was done to
that client build as well.
- A very old fix, for MS Word and mixed legal and letter sized pages, was
lost with Release build 123. It has been reinstated.
- A problem with multiple simultaneous conversions to 24-bit JPG-based file
types (JPEG, TIFF, PDF) was corrected.
- A small change was made to one build, and to one build technology.
- Release build 126 (10 February 04)
- A minor issue in the build tree change introduced at build 123 was
preventing normal users from printing in Windows 2000 and newer systems.
- Release build 125 (03 February 04)
- A new output file type was added. Color driver versions now include
support for TIFF compression mode 6 (JPEG within TIFF).
- Release build 124 (21 january 04)
- A long-standing bug in the FaxBatch drivers was dealt with -- when
printing in landscape mode, the printer would white-out the incorrect
area, the area corresponding to the text location before the page was
rotated into landscape.
- An issue with down-sampling from 24-bit color to monochrome output types
was found in one particular driver version. This was only a problem when
printing to a resolution > 210 dpi, in the '1/8/24 formats' PDF driver.
- Further enhancements to the new client build
- Release build 123 (27 November 03)
- It is now possible to define and use form sizes as large as 2000x2000
metres (over a mile on a side). Previously we were limited to forms no
larger than 3.25 metres (10 feet).
- A new client build caused a change in the build tree. This first check-
in of the client build is a test of the overall build stability.
- Release build 122 (01 October 03)
- A longstanding bug with mixed portrait and landscape pages in documents
was found and fixed.
- Release build 121 (01 August 03)
- Changing exact printing output resolution settings from an application's
printer settings box would cause a failure.
- The first time a driver is installed, the default resolution reported to
Windows when you first switch to Exact Printing is set to an
unrealistically low value (100x100 typically). We now default to a more
reasonable value.
- Release build 120 (17 July 03)
- Some rationalization of the build library was done
- One particular file type was being generated incorrectly. This has been
fixed.
- Release build 119 (16 May 03)
- Trivial changes related to the build process, plus sone rationalization
of included system libraries.
- Release build 118 (24 April 03)
- An earlier fix, Release build 114 "The right-edge unprintable area was
not getting cleared properly if error diffusion dithering was selected."
caused a problem in some cases when landscape printing was selected.
- Release build 117 (13 March 03)
- At the request of one client, the drivers can now check for free disk
space before going to the next page. This is controlled by a new registry
setting: "Free Space Minimum" REG_DWORD, measured in bytes, default
125000. This is the minimum amount of space that must be present for the
printing to continue. Note that this number is multiplied by 8 if you
select an 8-bit output type, 24 for a 24-bit filetype. Setting this
registry value to 0 disables drive space checking.
- Error reporting from the JPEG library was improved. Note that this
improvement depends on an enhancement to the JPEG library. These drivers
will work with the older JPEG library, but the error code reporting will
fall back to the older behaviour unless the JPEG library is version
1.0.0.3 or later.
- Release build 116 (26 February 03)
- One additional build type was created. This should not affect most
users of the drivers.
- A small issue in the version of the drivers that ships with the ODC
Server and Carrier-Grade Servers was corrected.
- Additional driver debug debug information is now available.
- An internal change caused a problem with page numbering in TIFF files
being generated by the printer. This has been fixed.
- Cancelling a JPEG print job, from the Printing Page x status box or
from the spooler, would result in a locked file. This has been fixed.
- Somehow a change made a year ago (in build 105) got backed out. It has
been re-instated.
- Release build 115 (29 January 02)
- One particular build type needed some additional work to support new
file types. This should not affect most users of these drivers.
- A user interface problem was found in the "browse for directory for
output file" code; this would result in "Unexpected error 123" when
selecting an output directory from the directory tree. This has been
fixed.
- Release build 114 (20 December 02)
- One particular page size caused a problem in the landscape page rotation
code. This has been fixed.
- The right-edge unprintable area was not getting cleared properly if error
diffusion dithering was selected. This has been corrected.
- Additional changes were made to support new file types. This should not
affect most users of these drivers.
- Release build 113 (17 December 02)
- The color drivers were returning an incorrect error code if they were
unable to create or open their output files.
- Release build 112 (4 December 02)
- Additional changes were made to support new file types. This should not
affect most users of these drivers.
- An internal change caused some difficulty with 256-color dither modes.
- An internal change caused the JPEG quality slider to be disabled.
- Release build 111 (19 November 02)
- Additional changes were made to support new file types. This should not
affect most users of these drivers.
- A potential buffer overrun was found in code that handled unprintable
areas in the driver. For certain very specific settings of resolution,
color mode, and left and right unprintable areas, this could result in a
blue-screen error.
- Release build 110 (6 November 02)
- Brought up to parity with W2K build 140. Changes include:
- Gray values in 256-color modes were improved again.
- The ActivePDF driver does strange things to the registry in order to
copy-protect itself. As a result, installation of earlier ImageMAKER
drivers will fail after ActivePDF has been installed, even if it is
later removed. We now set registry security descriptors to prevent this
problem. Note: This requires installer DLL version 1.2.24.0 or later.
- A number of internal changes were made to support additional output
file types. The file types are still in beta and so are not yet in the
release drivers, but changes to support them are now fully tested.
- An advanced feature was added that would allow turning off
concatenation of Excel worksheets (build 102 - 103).
- A check was made on loading user profile (implemented in build 105) so
that we no longer attempt to load a user profile for jobs created in
the LocalSystem account.
- Release build 109 (13 August 02)
- An oversight in the compile switches resulted in one driver version
failing to work properly.
- An uninitialized variable resulted in there being too few grey values in
256-color modes.
- Additional settings have been exposed on an Advanced section of the
Device Settings tab of the device properties.
- Release build 108 (25 July 02)
- A problem in handling custom form sizes was corrected.
- Some irregularities in setting the copy field in the DEVMODE were
corrected.
- The control dialog would not launch if the directory specified for the
TIFF file to be output did not exist. This is because the output
directory was used as the control dialog's working directory.
- Release build 107 (22 May 02)
- One particular build needed a custom string in order to not conflict
with our standard drivers. There should be no change to most drivers.
- Release build 106 (9 April 02)
- Various small changes for one client
- Release build 105 (4 April 02)
- When launching the control dialog in a specific user security context,
we had not been setting the users' profile or loading the users'
environment block correctly. Code to do this has been implemented and is
available in this version for testing.
- Changes for one client's custom file type were implemented.
- A long-standing problem with some lesser-used options was found and
fixed.
- An internal optimization would occasionally result in black junk
appearing on the right edge of TIFF images. The optimization was
rationalized.
- Release build 104 (23 January 02)
- The print driver was returning an error code at a time when there
was no error (user cancelled). Correcting this error caused the
special handling for Excel spreadsheets to break.
- The height of a landscaped page was being calculated incorrectly when
journalling was active.
- The limited FaxBatch version was double-incrementing page numbers.
- Release build 103 (21 January 02)
- Brought up to parity with the currently shipping version of our driver
for Windows 2000, Release build 131. This is the first version fully
tested against the release of Windows XP, and contains the following
fixes and enhancements:
- A problem having to do with unprintable areas on landscape pages was
fixed.
- A new verson of the FaxBatch driver was created that supports
journalling, but has limited FaxBatch capability. There should be no
effect on standard drivers.
- A problem with the exact printing and journalling combination was found
that would result in generated pages being totally scrambled. This
turned out to be the result of a rounding error in the exact printing
handling.
- The driver would not correctly generate a landscape-mode page if Exact
Printing was enabled.
- A problem was found when printing large pages at high resolution
(greater than 16,000 pixels total width, e.g. A-size sheet at 600 DPI).
- A further expansion of the fix to handle Excel workbooks (RC2 build
102) now allows this to work when printer pooling is enabled.
- Exact printing and journalling can now be provided in the same driver,
though journalling is disabled if exact printing is enabled.
- A long-standing bug with the TIFF color RLE (packbits) standard has
been fixed.
- A long-standing problem with generating file names when the driver is
set to generate a single page per file was found. This would affect
file names containing five or more digits. It has been fixed.
- changed the version number to 2 from 3. This fixes a problem printing
from WORD with files that have a portrait/landscape combination. The
last 1 or 2 pages are printed with the wrong orientation. Must also
disable 'Advanced Printing Features' from the 'Advanced' tab for this
fix to work. Microsoft claims a Kernel driver should be a Version 2
driver (not version 3).
- RC2 build 102 (5 October 01)
- Microsoft Excel generates multiple print jobs when printing a single
workbook because it stoes a DEVMODE with each worksheet; when it finds a
new DEVMODE while processing a workbook, it closes the job and opens a
new one (instead of using the ResetDC system API). Code to re-combine
jobs produced this way while they are being printed has been added to the
driver and can be enabled on a per-customer basis.
- RC1 Build 101 (24 Aug 2001)
- The first release of our driver that fully supports "journalling" or
"banding" in color modes, this driver should be immune to the occasional
"Error 0 - Cancelled from spooler" and should be able to handle any form
size up to the Windows DEVMODE limit of 3276.7mm / 3-1/4 meters
- An imperfection in handling the right edge of documents printed at
200x200 DPI was corrected.
- A new registry value has been added that forces the reported resolution
in the output TIFF file to square (200x200 or 200x100). Normally the
reported resolution is 204x196 or 204x98, because that is what FAX
modems expect, but one customer requested this change for their document
storage application.
- Aborting a print job should be much quicker.
- RC1 Build 100 (2 Aug 2001)
- First generally available version, this has the same functionality as
Windows 2000 build 122.
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