Introduction to GPD files
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.
GPD files are used for creating Unidrv minidrivers. A Unidrv minidriver consists of a text-based generic printer description (GPD), which can be contained in one or more GPD files.
GPD files use the GPD language to describe a printer. The files contain GPD file entries that use the GPD language to provide the following types of information:
Printer attributes that describe printer characteristics.
Printer commands that control printer operations.
Printer features describing the printer capabilities that can be controlled by Unidrv.
Printer options representing the states that can be assigned to printer features.
Printer font descriptions that specify the characteristics associated with hardware-resident and cartridge fonts.
Conditional statements that describe dependencies between printer attributes and a printer's configuration.
The GPD language also defines GPD file entries that control the following operations:
Handling installable features and options
Describing printer memory configurations
This introductory section also includes discussions of master units, using multiple GPD files in a minidriver, and using resource DLLs in a minidriver.