Windows PCL Drivers

Printer Command Language (PCL) was created by Hewlett Packard to provide an efficient method to control printer features across a number of different printing devices. PCL was originally devised for HP's dot-matrix and inkjet printers. The first printer in HP's LaserJet series, the "HP LaserJet" (introduced in 1984), released with the PCL 3 Language.

Currently available versions of PCL:

• PCL5: designed for more complex desktop publishing, graphic design, and presentation applications.

• PCL5e: provided bidirectional communication between the printer and the PC.

• PCL5c: provided the commands needed to support color printing.

• PCLXL: object-oriented printer language that is tuned for graphics-rich documents.

• PCL6: a dual interpreter consisting of PCL5e or PCL5c and PCLXL.

Multi-platform architecture

Windows 95/98, NT, 3.1, and NT 5.0 support in a single architecture, so a driver developed under one operating system works under all operating systems. Support for Windows 2000 will be added.

Status monitoring

Provides feedback to user regarding status of the printer. Enhanced version will provide status monitoring from anywhere from a web-based browser.

Image print preview

Preview a document to see what it is going to look like before printing.

PCL, HP-GL/2 support

For printers that can interpret HP-GL/2 or PCL (PCL5e, 5c, XL), our drivers can generate these data types when needed.

Image drivers

Users can create JPEG, GIF, TIF, BMP and other files from Windows.

N-up printing

Save paper by producing multiple documents on a single page.

Watermark

Add a watermark to documents.

Scaling

Allows document to be resized by the driver to fit optimally on the page.