🚀 go-pugleaf

Thanks Ian for the summary. Just one final comment:

> Also potentially misleading is the About.. information from the Distiller
> Printer properties which gives adist5.ppd and version 1.0 but no path name
> and no date - so if you have several adist5.ppd files on your system, you
> still are not sure which one is being used.
> [...]
> 3. Copy the adist5.ppd file to the WINNT\System32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3
> directory overwriting the old file.

A PPD file isn't really "in use" by a printer driver. When you create a
printer instance, the PPD file is read and incorporated into the file(s)
making up the printer instance. The PPD file isn't referenced or linked
to or read by the printer instance after its creation.

If you replace or edit a PPD file, you won't affect any of the printer
instances once created with that PPD file. It's not until you (re)create
a printer instance with the replaced/edited PPD file, that any changes
to the PPD file will take effect for the created printer instance.
I think that you in fact can delete all PPD files from your system
without affecting any printers, but I'm not in the mood to verify that :-)

Printer drivers, printers, and their instances are one of the more
confusing aspects of Windows. Even Adobe and Microsoft don't use the
same terminology, and Microsoft's PPD files are different from Adobe's
PPD files (I think Dov Isaacs used the term "castrated PPD files" once).


--
/Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
http://go.to/framers/