Printer driver types for the Windows print architecture

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1.3, printer drivers

printer driver ( Span style= "font-family: ' Times New Roman ', serif;" >printer driver

• host-based drivers (host-based Driver)

• based on PCL the driver

• based on Postscript the driver

1.3.1, host-based drivers(host-based Driver)

What is a host-based driver? Like the aboveV4The printer driver, the first thing we talked aboutGDIDrivers andXPSdrivers are actually host-based drivers. They have a common feature that is that these host-based drivers areGDI (XPS) +A combination of raster image processors. Raster Image Processing (Raster Image Processor(RIP) , a full-raster image processor, is a device that converts the data required for printing or printing to a raster image or dot matrix that can be output to paper or film using an inkjet printer or a laser output device. What does that mean? In the printing process of the entire printer has a very important two steps: The first step is to convert the required print files or data to the printer can recognize the data file or format; The second step is that the printer is interpreted in this format by the printer language, to know the content to be printed, line feed, paper feeding, etc. Then through the heart of the printer--the blood of the toner cartridge and the printer--Toner passes the content through inkjet/inkjet printing to paper. In addition to raster printing, there is also a kind of printing is vector printing, what is vector printing? Here we mention the printing type classification of traditional printers:

• Text printer

• Raster printers

• Vector printer

The text printer, by definition, is a text-only printer, such as a traditional line printer that can only print text, and is now not universally or invisibly seen in our environment.

/ doi The drawing commands are converted to raster images and encoded into a printer language.

vector printers and gratings differ Like, generally speaking, vector printers include laser printers, plotters, postscript printer. Although some of these printers may be raster-based during the actual printing process, they all accept vector-based input and convert them to raster solids in the printer. Vector-based printers generally put ddi pcl6 postscript

host-based driver and base The biggest difference between the grating and the vector is that the host-based print driver uses the computer instead of the printer's memory resources and processing power to perform the processing of the print task, completing the conversion process of the raster bitmap on the computer side and imaging directly in the printer. The host-based driver also improves printing speed. The host-based printer uses the processing power of the computer to convert the page information of the application software to raster format for printing. Because computers are processing faster than most printers, it is often quicker to use a host-based printer to handle complex print tasks. Of course, most host-based printers now use a faster print usb mouth without the same mouth. This is in windows CPU , memory and other devices, but the processor and memory compared to the computer is incomparable.

The benefits are obvious, but there are many disadvantages. For example, host-based printing requires that the computer's operating system has a print engine, which is associated with the page description Language(Page descriptionlanguage) PDLprinting is different. This means that host-based printing can only beWindowsin a system environment that explicitly supports the print engine, and does not support the use of a print engineLinux,Unixand theOS/2and other operating systems. And the biggest one is close to the user needs of the scene can not be satisfied: users need to network or remote printing! Host-based drivers require two-way communication, so the printer must be connected directly to the computer, so this type of printer driver is not suitable for network print jobs and does not support network servers, shared connections.

1.3.2,PCLprinter Driver

PCL printers are designed according to HP's Print control language standards, and print driver-generated data conforms to this standard, so printers produced by different manufacturers are compatible PCL print driver-generated basic print tasks. The PCL language is A Printer page description language that HP launched for its laser printer products in the years. the PCL directive is embedded in the print data stream to quickly translate the application output into high-quality, device-specific rasterized images.

PCLThe language was originally designed for dot-matrix printers,PCL3is the first widely used version, but it supports only a few simple print tasks. PCL4added support for graphic printing, because the interpretation work is relatively simple,PCL4than the latePCL5and thePCL6The requirements for the print controller are much lower. PCL5is aHPThe company specializes in laser printerslaserjetllldesigned, it provides some features withPostScriptsimilar language, such as the beginning of providing support for the description of vector graphics and vector fonts, implementsWYSIWYG (What do you Seeis Get,What you see is what you gain), now the mainstream is usingPCL6version. PCL6differs fromPCL5or the previousPCLdriver version, the big difference is that the instructions are sent to the printer differently.

mentioned here.PostScriptand thePCLThe two languages that we often mention in the previous article are two standardized page-description languages, which are device-independent printer languages that do not consider the characteristics of the output device at all when defining an image(such as the printer's resolution, paper size, etc.), the same process is applied to text and graphics. The workflow is to interpret the printed content as a standard page description file on the computer side and then transfer it to the printer controller, and then interpret the page description file as a raster image that can be printed in the print controller (Raster Image), from its workflow, both of these methods have high requirements for the print controller in the printer and require sufficient memory inside the printer. UsePCLlanguage printers have an obvious speed advantage when working with text or documents under some common Office applications, and are more suitable for some common business Office applications.

1.3.3,PostScriptprinter Driver

PostScriptthe data generated by the printer driver conforms to theAdobeSystem Company'sPostScriptStandard, it can be carried withPostScriptprinting of the printer, and it can also be handled by manyAdobeCompany's softwareAcrobat,Photoshopand other processing. 1985yearsPostScriptFirst edition(level)The standard was announced, and in the next few years achieved great success, followed by1991yearsAdobethe company releasedPostScript Level 2,Level 2Standard-PostScriptadded features include speed improvement and reliability stability, supportRIPwithin the segmentation, support decompression, support for composite fonts and cache content ReuseFormmechanism. PostScript Level 3in the1997at the end of the year, many of the older operators became a new dictionary-based version that provides better color processing and new filters, programs that allow compression and decompression within the programchunkingand advanced error handling. The current version is also available.

in thePostScriptbefore it appears, the printer is designed to have characters--is usuallyASCIIcharacters to print out. There are many techniques for this work, but most of them have a general character that is physically difficult to change, like a strip of metal or an optical plate on a typewriter key. True graphic printing is done by a special device called a plotter, which is indeed a common language--HPGL, but it doesn't have much use other than printing graphics. In addition, they are usually expensive and slow, so they are rarely used. PostScriptcombine the advantages of printers and plotters to break the tradition. As with a plotter,PostScriptwith high-quality curve processing ability and simple control language can be used for different brands of printers;PostScriptprovides a simple way to generate text and raster graphics. PostScriptis to put all of these different content on the same page, which gives you more flexibility than the previous printer or plotter.

postscript print driver. postscript pdf file or in photoshop PCL

Comparison of three print drivers

PCL and the PS is the two standardized page description language, the workflow is the first computer-side to interpret the printed content as a standard page description file, and then transferred to the printer controller, in the print controller and then the page description file can be printed into a raster image. From its workflow, both of these methods have high requirements for the print controller in the printer and require sufficient memory inside the printer.

PCL with the PS the common advantage of the drive is standardization and equipment independence, the computer system resource consumption, and the latest version of the font, graphics and image to improve the ability to interpret, so for the print quality requirements of the products, most of these two languages are used in the driver.

The difference between a host-based driver and the driver for the first two print languages is that this interpretation reduces the ability to interpret the printed content as a page description file, and then interprets the page description file as a raster image, but instead interprets the printed content directly in the computer as a raster bitmap that can be printed directly. This greatly reduces the performance and memory requirements of the print controller, but also increases the use of computer resources. The cost of the printer is reduced to a certain extent due to its reduced requirements on the print controller.

reference: Wikipedia: PCL , PostScript entry

HP Printer Technology Forum: http://support.hp.com/cn-zh/document/c00621153

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Printer driver types for the Windows print architecture