The Design and Implementation Guide is subdivided into books; each book corresponds to a hardware device or adapter class. Most users of the Microsoft® Windows® 95 Device Driver Kit (DDK) are interested in just one, or at most two, of these books and can ignore all the other books. For example, when device driver engineers use the DDK, they are usually building a driver for one specific device or adapter class and are only interested in that book in the guide. For example, an engineer developing a driver for a display adapter is only interested in the Display Drivers book of the guide.
Topics of interest to device driver developers for all classes of devices, such as Plug and Play and device installation, are in the Programmer's Guide.
Books in the Design and Implementation Guide correspond roughly to the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) hardware categories. In future releases of the DDK documentation, the books of the Guide correspond to the WHQL hardware categories. The WHQL hardware categories are changing and evolving as more and more certification tests are developed by WHQL. One goal for the guide is to make it clear which WHQL certification tests apply to a device or adapter driver developed with the help of a particular book of the guide.
The following table shows the relationship between the sections of the Driver Design Guide and the WHQL hardware categories.
WHQL hardware category | Design Guide section |
Audio adapters | Multimedia |
Display adapters and monitors | Display |
Input devices | Multimedia (joystick), Keyboard, Mouse, and Pen |
Modems | Modems |
Network adapters | Networks and Infrared |
Printers | Printers |
Storage adapters and devices | Storage |
Computer Systems | Communications |
Video capture adapters | Multimedia |
The Design and Implementation Guide Communications book covers writing drivers for serial (COM) and parallel (LPT) ports; the WHQL Computer Systems hardware category includes entire platforms, not just the serial and parallel ports. WHQL has a hardware category called Microprocessors (mother boards); there is no comparable book in the Design and Implementation Guide.
The next release of the Design and Implementation Guide will have an Input book containing joystick, keyboard, mouse, and pen device driver information all in one book. At some point, device driver information for scanners will be included in the Input book as well.
The catch-all Multimedia category may disappear in the future, both as a WHQL device class category and a DDK Design and Implementation Guide book, as WHQL develops certification tests for display, audio, joystick, and modem devices that use hardware designs recommended for running DirectX software.