Specifications

1. Select a printer manufacturer
2. Select the model of printer
3. Select the port (serial, parallel, network, or USB)
This process is performed through the Printers icon in the Control Panel.
Using the Printers Icon in the Control Panel
All the Windows operating systems have a Printers icon in the Control Panel. This is the central loca-
tion for all driver-configuration activities:
■ Local printer driver installation
■ Network printer driver installation
■ Printer testing
■ Alternative drivers for a given printer
■ Viewing and setting of printer properties
■ Printer diagnostics and utilities (many inkjet printers have head-alignment or cleaning features
located on the properties sheet)
If you have a printer that offers a choice of PDLs, you can install a driver for each of the supported
languages (typically PostScript and PCL) and select either one when you print a document. Experience
will teach you that each language has its strengths and when to use a particular language. Normally,
PCL is better for text-heavy documents, whereas PostScript is better for elaborate graphics, especially
those created with programs such as Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW.
If you have a network client installed on your system, you can install drivers for the printers you reg-
ularly access on the network. The Printers Control Panel enables you to browse the network by using
your client and to select the objects representing your network printers.
You also might encounter situations in which it is convenient to “print” a document to an imaginary
printer. If, for example, you have to submit a desktop publishing document for prepress work, you
can install the appropriate driver for their image setter on your PC and save the print job data to a file
instead of sending it out through a parallel or serial port.
The PDL code created by a printer driver is simply ASCII text, and as such, you can store it as a nor-
mal file on your PC. All Windows and most DOS printer drivers enable you to select an output desti-
nation of FILE as an alternative to a parallel or serial port. When you actually print a document, the
system prompts you for the name and location of the output file to be created.
You can then transport the print file to a system with the appropriate printer by using a disk, a
modem, or any other standard medium. After the file is there, you can simply direct it out the appro-
priate printer port by using the
COPY command shown earlier. Because the printer driver has already
processed the job, you do not need to have the application that created the document or the printer
driver installed on the system. All the commands are in the output file, and you simply must get it to
the printer. With Windows, you also can drag-and-drop the output file to the appropriate printer icon
or right-click the file and select Send To (printer name) to print the document.
If you need plain-text output from a program that lacks a File, Save command but allows printed out-
put, you should set up a text-only printer (Generic-Text only in Windows) as one of your printer
choices and set its port to FILE. “Print” a report to this “printer” and you create a plain-text ASCII file
you can use with a word-processing program.