| Color
Printers
Printer
Languages
Color printers are generally used to produce complex output. As
a result, color printers need to be equipped with fairly high-end
printer languages.
The most common language used by color printers is PostScript. PostScript
is a printer language that describes images the same way no matter
what type of printer is receiving the instructions. As a result,
a PostScript document will look the same whether printed on a cheap
laser printer or a professional quality imagesetter.
Some printer manufacturers choose not to pay PostScript's high licensing
fees, and instead use a clone interpreter to convert the PostScript
language into printer commands. Clone versions of PostScript tend
to work fine most of the time, but may run into inexplicable difficulty
with very complex images.
The major alternative to PostScript is Hewlett-Packard's PCL language.
PCL cannot be used with Macintosh computers, and is not as popular
as PostScript among high-end printers. It is, however, the most
common language with ink-jet models.
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