Spooler Management and Configuration

The spooler provides a set of functions that allows management of all aspects of the print subsystem. There are five categories:

• Job querying and manipulation (SplxxxJob)
  
• Queue creation, querying, and manipulation (SplxxxQueue)
  
• Device creation, querying, and manipulation (SplxxxDevice
  
• Listing ports, printer drivers, queue processors (SplEnumyyy)
  
• Listing printers across a network (SplEnumPrinter)

The symbol xxx typically represents Add, Delete, Enum, Query, and Set. For jobs and queues, xxx also includes Hold and Release. For devices, xxx includes Control. The symbol yyy is either Port, PrinterDriver, or QueueProcessor.

It is anticipated that most applications will not use any spooler functions at all except SplEnumQueue, SplQueryQueue, and SplQueryDevice. However, there are some specialized applications that might use the spooler functions for the following:

• An administrative tool to manage queues and jobs

• An automatic printer object configurator

  A new printer object can be created by using SplCreateDevice and SplCreateQueue. The print subsystem recognizes that this has occurred and puts a printer object directly on the desktop.

When the spooler is disabled, the following spooler functions do not return any results:

SplControlDevice SplCopyJob
SplDeleteJob
SplEnumJob
SplQueryJob
SplReleaseJob
SplSetJob

No function is available to enable or disable the spooler under application control; this is a user decision. It is recommended that the spooler always be enabled.