Raw.exe Sends Binary Data to Printer w/Device Driver

In the Microsoft Windows environment, device ports are a scarce resource that are shared by all applications running in the system. If an application is designed to send raw, unformatted data to a device port, it should use the Windows Print Spooler to ensure that two or more applications do not use the port at once.

The best method to implement this functionality is by means of a device driver through which an application can pass data to the port without change. Raw.exe is a file in the Microsoft Download Center that contains the source code to a device driver that implements the PASSTHROUGH escape function. The RAW printer driver is intended as a sample driver and has not been designed to be distributed as part of a commercial application.

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:
For additional information about how to download Microsoft Support files, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Microsoft scanned this file for viruses. Microsoft used the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help to prevent any unauthorized changes to the file. Earlier versions of the RAW driver were incompatible with Adobe Type Manager (ATM) because ATM requires a printer driver to return a nonzero value when the driver processes the RealizeObject function. The current version of RAW has been updated to be compatible with ATM.