A method for communicating device settings from an application to a device driver, by storing the settings in a temporary file, and communicating the temporary file's name to the device driver. Application programming interfaces (APIs) of programming languages often provide access to only a subset of device settings. Fore example, Java and C APIs may provide access to the common printer (public devmode) settings but not to the optional and printer-model-specific (private devmode) settings. The method enables communication of device settings not included in the APIs. Methods include use of Java Native Interface call, encoding a temporary file name in a job name, unique identification string in a job name, unique file names supporting simultaneous, multiple jobs, and modularization by a user interface package and a communication interface package.