opnions on pcl or ps drivers 6

[projector1]

hi i would be greatful if i could get some feedback on the differences in pcl drivers and postscript drivers.
Is one more stable than the other, more common than the other etc
thanks

 

[franklin97355]

If it works for you use those that come with the printer. You only need to pick one over the other if your application requires it.

 

[DestinysDream]

Mostly I have found that only one will work depending on OS. Printer drivers are not really stable. But like franklin said just pick one and if it does not work the driver can be changed in 1 minute easily.

If anyone calls and says "I know a little something about computers" just tell them to reformat it.

 

[crisc]

In my experience, PCL drivers are universally preferred for almost all printing applications.

The lone exception comes with printing from Adobe products. For some reason, these apps doesn't work well with PCL drivers, usually resulting in garbled, misaligned printouts. PS drivers work very well with Adobe, and that is the only time I have anyone use them.

 

[BionicJohn]

Both Adobe's PS and HP's PCL drivers are page desciption languages. This means they are both languages that describe how to print a page. Each has its own positive and negative qualities, and they are good for different things.

PCL drivers do most of the rendering on the local workstation and the information is sent in essentially binary form to printer. Postscript drivers essentially send a page description to the printers where it is rendered. Since local workstations are generally MUCH faster than the printers, PCL printing is much faster than postscript and because it requires less printer memory. Some jobs may only print if sent using PCL drivers. However, PCL is also a simpler language than Postscript so it lacks many of the complex drawing and scaling functions that are available in Postscript. Therefore, if you are using a package which takes advantage of postscript's capabilities (e.g. most Adobe products and some others), you may get better quality output using postscript drivers and your complex print job may not print properly or at all using the PCL driver.

A postscript printer driver is an essential part of creating a PDF.

Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[crisc]

Wow, thanks for the great explanation BigJohnD! I'll star that.

 

[TekTippy4U]

I'll see you one (*) - and raise you one. Now I know where to come for Printer driver info.....cool! BigJohnD

TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[BionicJohn]

Thanks for the stars.

I should perhaps had added that the genuine postscript interpreter is copyrighted by Adobe, and is always preferable to a clone, e.g. Brotherscript or some of HP's PScript.

Postscript is the default printer mode for Macs; it's not usually the case on a PC unless it's primarily used for Adobe apps.

Often a Postscript Module (looks like a memory DIMM) can be added to PCL printer so it will work in both modes. But the Postscript Module can be expensive (£150) and will require more printer RAM, which for some reason is always more expensive than PC RAM even when it is exactly the same.

My HP 1200 PS has 36Mb of RAM and occasionally that isn't enough for an A4 page full of complex images/drawings.

In the final analysis though, high quality work from PageMaker, InDesign or QXP will be done using Postscript as it is happy with CMYK colours and can separate them for process printing. Consequently Postscript is not happy with Windows Metafiles based on default Windows RGB colour palette which does not wholly translate to CMYK
See:

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/2f05a.htm

And:

http://www.cdman.com/graphics/color/gamut.html

PCL is just fine for office applications, and I know from experience that some non-PS Epson printers can produce remarkable photo-quality output.

Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[BionicJohn]

Sorry about the link - it should be:

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/2f05a.htm

Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.