Optimizing Printing by Providing a Printer Handle

One of the constructors for the Graphics class receives a device context handle and a printer handle. When you send Windows GDI+ commands to certain PostScript printers, the performance will be better if you create your Graphics object with that particular constructor.

The following console application calls GetDefaultPrinter to get the name of the default printer. The code passes the printer name to CreateDC to obtain a device context handle for the printer. The code also passes the printer name to OpenPrinter to obtain a printer handle. Both the device context handle and the printer handle are passed to the Graphics constructor. Then two figures are drawn on the printer.

#include <windows.h>
#include <gdiplus.h>
#include <stdio.h>
using namespace Gdiplus;

INT main()
{
   // Initialize GDI+.
   GdiplusStartupInput gdiplusStartupInput;
   ULONG_PTR gdiplusToken;
   GdiplusStartup(&gdiplusToken, &gdiplusStartupInput, NULL);

   DWORD   size;
   HDC     hdcPrint;
   HANDLE  printerHandle;

   DOCINFO docInfo;
   ZeroMemory(&docInfo, sizeof(docInfo));
   docInfo.cbSize = sizeof(docInfo);
   docInfo.lpszDocName = "GdiplusPrint";

   // Get the length of the printer name.
   GetDefaultPrinter(NULL, &size);
   TCHAR* buffer = new TCHAR[size];

   // Get the printer name.
   if(!GetDefaultPrinter(buffer, &size))
   {
      printf("Failure");
   }
   else
   {
      // Get a device context for the printer.
      hdcPrint = CreateDC(NULL, buffer, NULL, NULL);

      // Get a printer handle.
      OpenPrinter(buffer, &printerHandle, NULL);

      StartDoc(hdcPrint, &docInfo);
      StartPage(hdcPrint);
         Graphics* graphics = new Graphics(hdcPrint, printerHandle);
         Pen* pen = new Pen(Color(255, 0, 0, 0));
         graphics->DrawRectangle(pen, 200, 500, 200, 150);
         graphics->DrawEllipse(pen, 200, 500, 200, 150);
         delete(pen);
         delete(graphics);
      EndPage(hdcPrint);
      EndDoc(hdcPrint);

      ClosePrinter(printerHandle);
      DeleteDC(hdcPrint);
   }

   delete buffer;
   
   GdiplusShutdown(gdiplusToken);
   return 0;
}