Home
Contents
Legal
Dedicated
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Glossary
Error
Messages

Two (or three) modes of printing 

Printing from Windows generally falls into two modes: graphics and character.  Graphics printing means that the text is converted to a picture.  The picture is sent to the printer in the form of millions of electronic bits, representing millions of little black dots.  If this works, you can print anything, given enough time.  Each letter, freely estimating, may require a thousand bits.  (If your printer resolution is 300 by 300, that makes 90,000 dots per square inch.)

Character printing means that codes for letters, numbers, and control functions are sent to the printer.  Each character code is eight bits.  If the printer driver program says that the printer has the desired font, printing may proceed immediately by character mode.  Most characters are what you see. A few more are commands needed to generate the fancy appearance.

If the printer does not have the font, we have one more out. The printer has a memory, usually ranging from half a million bytes (eight bits each) to several million bytes. The type font can be downloaded to the printer.  That takes time.  When it is done, the printer can accept printing instructions in character mode.  This is great, until you start printing in several fonts. When all memory is used up, either some fonts print as graphics, or the least recently used font is deleted and replaced by one needed later.  This can involve much time spent downloading.