Contents
What is Miraplacid Text Driver
Miraplacid Text Driver
is software to extract text from printable documents. Miraplacid
installer adds a new printer to the system. Printer name is
"Miraplacid Text Driver". When you
print to this "printer", Miraplacid Text Driver dialog pops
up. You can preview the extracted text, apply some formatting options
and encoding (ANSI or Unicode). Then you can save it to text file, print
to a real printer or upload to a server. Orignial document could be redirected to a real printer.
Miraplacid Text Driver consists of the
following components:
- Installer – to install the
Miraplacid Text Driver components
- Miraplacid
Text Driver Core – to process the image. Core includes text rendering
plug-ins (like formatted text, plain text and so on) and Transport plug-ins
(like save-to-file, upload-to-FTP-server, etc)
- Printer Driver – to transfer
image Windows printing system and Miraplacid image processing Core
- User Interface (UI) – to let
user tell Core what to do
Learn more about Miraplacid Text Driver.
What is Miraplacid Text Driver Software Development Kit (SDK)
Miraplacid Text Driver SDK includes
- setup making wizard
setupmaker.exe. Start it, set all the parameters, push "Ok"
buttons and get your custom Text Driver installation component mtd.dll. This dll has everything to install
Miraplacid Text Driver to new PC. Those parameters include printer
driver name and all the other names. You can change it to your
company name or your product name (see license agreement for
detail).
- Miraplacid Text Driver documentation
- SDK documentation
- Custom installer, sample registration utility
and custom User Interface.
Miraplacid Text Driver SDK works only on Windows 2000/XP/2003 and contain driver for these platforms only.
That means, custom driver built with SDK setupmaker will only work on Windows 2000/XP/2003.
Do you need SDK or regular Miraplacid Text Driver is what you need?
Miraplacid Text Driver saves all the settings to system registry as a set of profiles. It means, that
you can set it once and use it over and over. If you never change
settings, just turn auto-save mode on and Miraplacid Text Driver will
not bug you with UI dialog. You can add something like {{DATE}},
{{JOB}} and {{PAGE}} to path or filename, and all the result images
will be saved separately.
If it works for you, you probably do not need the SDK.
All the Miraplacid Text Driver controls
you can see on Miraplacid Text Driver UI dialog, also available through
COM interface. In fact, UI communicates with Core through COM. It
means, that you can write a script or application to manage printing
process. See docmtd/mtdprog.html
If this is what you need, you still can
do it without using SDK.
There are the folowing cases when you need the SDK:
- When you integrate Miraplacid
Text Driver with your product and want everything to be installed by
your installer. Meaning, you do not want Miraplacid Text Driver
installation dialogs to pop up.
- When you need custom User Interface which will be compatible with your product by functionality.
- When you need to have much more control over printing process. In this case, you will need to write your own User Interface, which could not contain any actual graphics elements.
This UI may just control printing process.
- When you need to have a automation component for document-to-text convertion purposes which will be named and look like integral part of your own product (re-branding).
How to start working with SDK
With Miraplacid Text Driver SDK you will prepare printer driver installation package and install the
driver on your PC.
If you skip these steps and launch some sample application, you will probably get an error mesage,
cause some SDK components require proper registration and installation.
- Launch setupmaker.exe. Default settings work fine. Press Ok button.
- Copy mtd.dll generated by setupmaker.exe to examples\setupui folder.
- Launch Setup.exe and press Install button.
Now you can start over and change settings or play with other SDK modules.
So what did we just do?
setupmaker.exe is a printer driver installation Wizard. It created printer driver installer dll
(mtd.dll).
examples\setupui\Setup.exe is a live example of custom Text Driver setup utility.
It loads mtd.dll from the current folder (that is why we have to copy it first) and
calls installation handler. mtd.dll installs virtual printer driver to the system.
Custom Installer
mtd.dll
does not include dialogs. You can implement your own UI if you need
one. There is pretty straightforward setup sample UI on VB6 in folder
examples\setupui\
If you integrate
Miraplacid Text Driver into your software, you will probably prefer to
use single UI for all your components and call Miraplacid
Installation and Uninstallation functions form there.
There are two ways
how you can integrate the installer with your system:
- through DLL function calls
- trough COM interface
COM interface will
give you error details and progress information.
See sample setup UI in
folder
\examples\setupui
There interfaces
described here:
installer.html
Custom User Interface
Your UI does not
have to look like Miraplacid Text Driver UI. You might want to manage
Miraplacid Text Driver core form your software rather than write a
stand-alone UI executable. Just create an instance of object MP with
events (if you write on VB – or implement COM events sink if
you write on C++), call MP methods, change properties and handle
events.
See sample UI in
folder
\examples\customui
You will find more
information on MP Core programming here:
mtdprog.html
Software Registration
When you install
Miraplacid Text Driver, it shows "Trial Period" dialog with
"Register" and "Continue" buttons. You can
register it or continue using for 15 days. After 15 days "Continue"
button disappear and you have to register or stop using Miraplacid
Text Driver.
If you integrate
Miraplacid Text Driver into your software and do not want your
customers to register Miraplacid Text Driver manually, you can do it
through COM interface.
You will find the
interface description here:
mtdprog.html
See registration
example here:
\examples\register
If you integrate
Miraplacid Text Driver into your software, you really have three
options:
- if Miraplacid
Text Driver is an optional software in your system, you can let your
customers to register it themselves if they need it.
- You can
purchase Miraplacid Text Driver license for your customer and register
Miraplacid Text Driver via COM interface
- You can
purchase Miraplacid Text Driver SDK with Unlimited license. In this
case you do not need to bother about registration.
It could make a perfect sense if you plan to install your product
based on Miraplacid Text Driver
technology on more that one hundred PCs.
Please contact us: sales@miraplacid.com
See Miraplacid
Text Driver SDK licensing agreement for details
Software Licensing
You will need Miraplacid Text Driver software license for yourself when SDK trial period expired.
You will also need software licenses for your customers. Miraplacid Text Driver licenses can be
purchased from Miraplacid web site.
We strongly recommend you to sign up a reseller to purchase licenses. As soon as you purchase
5 first licenses, you will get big discount on all following licenses.
Here is how Miraplacid reseller program works:
- You register as a reseller
- Login to password protected area and purchase licenses. Unlike regular license purchase,
you are not getting keycode instantly. Instead, you can go to keycode generation page and
- Generate as many keycodes as you need (sorry, you cannot generate more keycodes than you purchased).
You have to provide customer First Name and Last Name to generate a keycode.
- You register customer's copy of the software (see Software Registration for details).
Miraplacid software registration requires customer First Name, Last Name and Keycode. All fields are
case sensetive.
If buying and installing licenses is too complicated in your case, consider
purchasing Unlimited version of Miraplacid Text Driver SDK.
Please contact us: sales@miraplacid.com
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