Printing

Print jobs are sent in a variety of formats, each of which is suited to different computing environments.

EMF

Enhanced Metafile (EMF) is the standard format for print jobs created on Windows 2000. EMFs are very portable because the instructions for the print job are assembled on the users computer, but processing of the print job and its instructions is completed by the spooler. Because the spooler is associated with a specific printer, EMF files can be sent to any printer that has a spooler that handles EMFs.

EMF data is created by the GDI. After an EMF job is sent to the spooler, control is returned to the user and the spooler finishes processing the job. This limits the amount of time that the users computer is busy.

RAW

RAW is a common data type for non-Windows 2000 clients. RAW data is not modified by the spooler at all, but is sent directly to the printer.

RAW [FF Appended]

RAW [FF Appended] is exactly like the RAW data type except that a form feed character is automatically appended to the end of each print job. The last page of a RAW document does not print on a Printer Control Language (PCL) printer, so appending a form feed is necessary.

RAW [FF Auto]

RAW [FF Auto] is exactly like the RAW data type, except the spooler checks the document for a form feed character at the end of the job. If there is no form feed, the spooler adds one.

Text

Text tells the spooler that the data is ANSI text and that it must not be modified. Text is printed using the printers default font.

Text data is composed of values from 0 to 255, each value representing a different character. This data type is based on the ANSI standard, so if the data was created with an application using another character set, it wont be printed. This is more often a problem in the extended character range, represented by values above 127.

PSCRIPT1

This data type is created by Macintosh clients printing in Level 1 monochrome PostScript. The spooler interprets the data, creates a bitmap of the page, translates the image to the printer language, and sends the information to the printer where the output is produced.