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In computers, a printer driver or a print processor is a piece of software on a computer that converts the data to be printed to a format that a computer printer can understand. The purpose of printer drivers is to allow applications to do printing without being aware of the technical details of each printer model.
Printer drivers should not be confused with , which queue and send them successively to a printer.
Backends are also used to determine the available devices. On startup, each backend is asked for a list of devices it supports, and any information that is available.
Users can use commands like, for example, "COPY ''file1'' LPT1:" to print the content of a file to a printer. The contents is transferred to the printer without any interpretation. Therefore, this method of printing is either for files already stored in the corresponding printer's language or for generic without more than simple line-oriented formatting.
DOS also provides a dynamically loadable print spooler named PRINT as well as optional support to support screen captures also in graphics mode through GRAPHICS. If the optional character device driver PRINTER.SYS is loaded, DOS provides its code page switching support also for the associated printers—different types of dot matrix and ink jet printers are supported by default.
Beyond this, there are no system-wide printer-specific drivers for use at application level under MS-DOS/PC DOS. Under DR-DOS, however, the SCRIPT command can be loaded to run in the background in order to intercept and convert printer output from applications into PostScript to support PS-capable printers also by applications not supporting them directly.
In order to support more complex printing for different models of printers, each application (e.g. a word processor) may be shipped with its own printer drivers, which were essentially descriptions of printer . Printers, too, have been supplied with drivers for the most popular applications. In addition, it's possible for applications to include tools for editing printer description, in case there was no ready driver. In the days when DOS was widely used, many printers had emulation modes for Epson FX-80 list of Epson FX printer codes and IBM Proprinter commands. Many more recent also have emulation modes for Hewlett-Packard PCL (HP LaserJet) or PostScript printers which will work in DOS. It appears that these are also compatible with Windows 3.x. Citizen Printer Emulation Modes for Microsoft Windows 3.0
Win32 APIs also allow applications to send data directly to the spooler, bypassing the printer driver; however, few applications actually use this option.
The printer driver is usually located on the C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository folder on a Windows machine.
Any Amiga printer driver had to communicate though the standard Amiga printer.device (the default standard hardware device of Amiga dealing with printers), and the standard parallel.device (which controlled parallel port) and the driver would then control the printer on its own.
Amiga printer drivers were an innovation for their time. They spared users from individually configuring each of their applications. They had the ability to print up to 4096 colors.
Through the use of the Printer Preferences program printers could be connected to the serial port as well.
Amiga also had support for a virtual device "PRT:" to refer to printer.device so, for example the command "COPY file TO PRT:" caused the file to be printed directly bypassing parallel.device and the default printer driver. Amiga used ANSI escape codes, not the special ones defined by the various printer manufacturers. This way every application on the Amiga could use the same standard set of control sequences and wouldn't need to know which printer is actually connected. The printer driver then translated these standard sequences into the special sequences a certain printer understands.
Amiga internal function "PWrite" of printer.device writes 'length' bytes directly to the printer. This function is generally called on by printer drivers to send their buffer(s) to the printer. Number of buffers are decided by the persons who created the driver. Amiga lacked a standard Printer Spooler.
Since AmigaOS 2.0 a standard printer.device was changed to control various printers at same time. The Printer preferences were divided in three main panels: Prefs:Printer which selects main printer and other basic elements such as "Print Spacing" and "Paper Size". PrinterGFX controlled features like Dithering and Scaling. PrinterPS controlled Postscript Printers. The printer drivers surprisingly remained almost same of Workbench 1.3, with 4096 limits.
This fact led Amiga users to prefer third party Printer Systems with their own drivers, like TurboPrint and PrintStudio, which introduced not only recent drivers, but also featured a functioning Printer Spooler into Amiga, and featured 16 million colors printing. MorphOS uses a special version of TurboPrint to pilot recent printers.
Many Amiga programs like DTP programs as PageStream featured in the past its own printer drivers.
USB printers are automatically recognized by the Poseidon USB Stack. This stack is capable of detecting any USB device by its class, but printers still require a driver to be controlled.
Examples of manufacturer specific formats include:
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