General attributes

Important

The modern print platform is Windows' preferred means of communicating with printers. We recommend that you use Microsoft's IPP inbox class driver, along with Print Support Apps (PSA), to customize the print experience in Windows 10 and 11 for printer device development.

For more information, see Modern print platform and the Print support app design guide.

General attributes represent one of the attribute types defined by the GPD language. General attributes aren't associated with a particular feature or option. The general attributes are divided into the following groups:

Root-Level-Only Attributes

General Printing Attributes

Text Printing Attributes

Raster Printing Attributes

Vector Printing Attributes

Usually, you place all general attributes in a GPD file at root level (that is, not inside braces). The root-level-only attributes must always be placed at root level.

Occasionally, the value of a general attribute (except for the root-level-only attributes) is dependent on configuration parameters. In such a case, the attribute entry might be placed within an *Option statement, or within a *Case statement (located either at root level or contained in an *Option statement). If the attribute isn't at root level (either because it's contained in an *Option statement or because it is in a nonroot-level *Case statement), the attribute name must be prefixed by the EXTERN_GLOBAL symbol, as follows:

EXTERN_GLOBAL: *AttributeName: AttributeValue

For more information about specifying configuration dependencies, see Conditional Statements.