Winflector Universal Printer
With version 3.7.0.0 Winflector printing capabilities have been enhanced by introducing Winflector
virtual printer driver.
Printing using Winflector is straightforward and does not require any reconfiguration. In particular it does not require installing any additional printer drivers on the client computers. The application started using Winflector has access to all printers available on the client station and, depending on the configuration, to printers installed on the application server. Each of the simultaneously executed applications has access to the printers of its own client station and optionally to those of the server.
Installation
"Winflector Printer" is installed on the server during Winflector setup process. There is no need to install the driver on the client. Printing is made through the client network connection, so no need to configure any new connections for printing.Using mapped printers
If printer mapping is turned on, each application running under Winflector will see additional printers mapped from the client machine and special printer called "Winflector Printer". Each mapped printer will have @WFC.PID postfix appended to its original name as seen on the client. @WFC means this is "virtual" Winflector-mapped printer, PID stands for process ID and is required to distinguish same-named printers within different processes/users."Winflector Printer" always maps to default client printer, even if you don't select "Set terminal default printer on server" option in client configuration.
Other "@WFC" printers are mapped to the same-named client printers. If "Set terminal default printer on server" client option is turned on, the same-named server printer becomes the default printer for the process.
Regardless of whether you choose "Winflector Printer" or any of the @WFC.PID postfixed printers printing is made via virtual Winflector Printer driver and is send to the appropriate client printer through the client network connection.
Features
Virtual Winflector Printer driver supports printing via EMF files and bitmaps.EMF printing (the default) creates printout in Window Enhanced Metafile format, transfers printout pages to the client and prints the EMF file on the selected printer. EMF printing is preferable over bitmap printing. Usually printouts are smaller and contain full color information. However, the results depend on the fonts availability on the client and may slightly differ from original (server) printouts if exactly same fonts are not available.
Bitmap printing is available in 2, 16 and 256 colors. Rendering is made via printer driver, so it gives you 100% server printout compatibility but may lose some color information. Printing in 2 colors (the default for bitmap printing) gives a good printout results with low memory and transfer overhead. Driver emulates colors using dithering. All bitmaps are transferred via network in lossless compression format, so the transfer overhead compared to EMF files is not very large.
