Creating and Sending Print Jobs


Windows XP Professional supports the following ways to create and send a print job to the printer:

  • Drag a file to a printer icon in the Printer folder. The file then prints on that printer.

  • Create a shortcut to a printer, and then add it to the Send To menu. Right-click a file, point to Send To, and click the name of the printer you want to use.

  • Open a file in the program you used to create the file. Click File, and then click Print.

  • Right-click a file, and then click Print. The default printer prints the file, and then closes the application.

Modifications to the Print Dialog Box

The Windows XP Professional Print dialog box includes several modifications to previous versions of Windows.

The Print dialog box includes improvements that allow you to:

  • Use the Find Printer button to browse for printers that are not installed on your computer, but are available on the network. After you find a printer, you can use Point and Print to establish a connection with the printer and install the required drivers.

  • Use the Preferences button to change the Layout or Paper/Quality settings.

Note 

The changes to the Print dialog box are not supported by all applications.

Printer Drivers

A printer driver is a software program that converts application-drawing commands to printer-ready-data. Printer drivers translate the information a user sends from the computer into commands that the printer understands.

The Microsoft Universal and PostScript drivers are enhanced printer drivers, which improve printing in the following ways.

Universal Driver

The Universal driver has been optimized for improved quality and faster printing, and Image Color Management (ICM) 2.0 ensures accurate color. The Generic Print Description (GPD) supports minidrivers, which extract the details of each printer s features and allow some unsupported printers to work with Windows XP Professional.

For more information about ICM, see Image Color Management 2.0 later in this chapter.

The Universal driver enhances font performance and capabilities. Printer font substitution results in better output. Two-byte fonts are supported, allowing the printing of extended punctuation marks, ideographs, and character sets, such as Basic Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Indic, Thai, Kana, and Hangul characters.

The Universal driver supports customization, allowing greater flexibility for print devices that can be used with Windows XP Professional.

PostScript 5.0 Driver

The PostScript 5.0 driver provides improved performance through enhanced virtual memory management. Color printing with the PostScript driver uses ICM 2.0, which ensures that color images are faithfully reproduced.

Microsoft has extended the PostScript driver to support more font formats and provide the structure for further customization.

PostScript continues to support the following:

  • PostScript levels 1, 2, and 3.

  • ICM 2.0.

  • Control over output data format, allowing for CTRL+D handling, Binary Communications Protocol (BCP), Tagged Binary Communications Protocol (TBCP), and pure binary (8-bit) channels such as AppleTalk.

  • PPD version 4.2 and .wpd files.

  • Simplified Printer Description (.spd) files.

  • Tracking of virtual memory available to the printer.

Image Color Management 2.0

Image Color Management (ICM) 2.0 ensures that printed colors are accurately reproduced. To use ICM 2.0, your printer must support it. In some cases you can use a third-party calibration tool to create or update a color profile for your printer. This compensates for color variations between different printers of the same type or the variations that occur as a printer ages.

Methods of Sending Print Jobs

By using new port monitors and newly supported connection methods, Windows XP Professional sends print jobs faster than previous versions of Windows.

For sending print jobs you can use:

Standard Port Monitor

The standard port monitor connects clients to network printers that use the TCP/IP protocol. It replaces the LPR port monitor (Lprmon) as the preferred port monitor for TCP/IP printers that are connected directly to the network through a network adapter. The new standard port simplifies the installation of most TCP/IP printers by detecting the network settings. Printers connected to a UNIX or Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) host might still require Lprmon.

The standard port monitor is the preferred port monitor in Windows XP Professional. The standard port monitor can use Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to configure and monitor the printer status. In addition to the standard port monitor, Internet printing adds an HTTP print provider.

The standard port monitor communicates with network-ready printers, network adapters like Hewlett-Packard s JetDirect and external network print servers like Intel s NetPort. The standard port monitor can support many printers on a single server and is faster and easier to configure than Lprmon.

The standard port monitor sends documents to a printer by using either the RAW or LPR printing protocol. Together, these protocols support most current TCP/IP printers. Do not confuse these print protocols with transport protocols such as TCP/IP or Data Link Control (DLC).

The RAW protocol is the default print protocol for most print devices. To send a job formatted with RAW, the print server opens a TCP stream to the printer s port 9100 or another port number and selects the connections to multiport external devices. For example, on certain print devices port 9101 goes to the first parallel port, 9102 goes to the second parallel port, and so on.

The standard port monitor uses the LPR protocol when you specify LPR protocol during port installation or reconfiguration, or when the RAW protocol cannot be established.

The standard port monitor deviates from the LPR standard in the following ways:

The standard port monitor can send print jobs to the LPD service running on a print server. For more information about LPD, see Port Monitor later in this chapter.

Improved Status Information

The standard port monitor is compatible with RFC 1759, the standard printer management information bases (MIB). As a result, on devices that support SNMP and RFC 1759, the standard port monitor can provide detailed status.

For more information about printing to devices located on other platforms, see Printing from Other Operating Systems earlier in this chapter.

To configure a standard TCP/IP port by using the standard port monitor

  1. Select an installed printer, click File, and then click Properties.

  2. Click the Ports tab, and then click Add Port.

  3. Click Standard TCP/IP Port, and then click New Port.

  4. In the Printer Name or IP Address text box, type a name or the IP address of a print device.

  5. In the Port Name text box, type a host-resolvable port name, which can be any character string, or use the default name that the wizard supplies, and then click Next.

  6. If prompted by the Additional Port Information Required dialog box, click Standard, and then select one of the devices listed.

    or

    Click Custom, and then configure the port by using the Configure Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor dialog box. (If you do not know details about the port, use Generic Network Card.)

  7. When prompted for the protoco483

    l, select either RAW (preferred) or LPR.

    If the wizard detects that the device supports multiple ports, as indicated in the Tcpmon.ini file, it prompts you to select a port.

    Warning 

    The system sends an SNMP get command to the device. An SNMP get command asks for the status of a device. In this case, the system uses the SNMP get command to request a status check from that printer. By using the SNMP values returned from the get command, the system determines device details and the appropriate device options are displayed for further selection. For example, you can select the correct printer port.

  8. Select a port from the list and finish the wizard.

    The new port is listed on the Ports tab of the Properties dialog box.

Reconfiguring the Standard Port Monitor

The standard port monitor port can be reconfigured in the printer Properties dialog box. On the Ports tab, click Configure Port. The standard port monitor has its own Configure dialog box.

Caution 

The Configure Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor dialog box does not verify that the options you select are correct. If they are incorrect, the port does not work. Check with the printer manufacturer to see if the device supports SNMP.

Status Reporting

Printers return print status over SNMP. Because the standard port monitor is compatible with SNMP, it allows detailed status reporting when the printer provides it. Printers that do not comply with the SNMP standard do not return status information, and when an error occurs during printing, the spooler either displays a general printing error or fails to detect an error.

Internet Printing

Windows XP Professional supports Internet printing. This makes it possible to use printers located anywhere in the world by sending print jobs using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Using Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) or a Web peer server, Windows XP Professional creates a Web page that provides information about printers and provides the transport for printing over the Internet. Using the Internet, printers can be used to replace fax machines or postal mail.

Use an Internet printer as you would any other Windows XP Professional installed printer.

For more information about installing an Internet printer on your computer, see Installing Network and Internet Printers earlier in this chapter.

For more information about managing print jobs sent by using Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) version 1.0, see Printing Over the Internet later in this chapter.

USB

Windows XP Professional supports printing to Universal Serial Bus (USB) printers. USB is composed of an external bus architecture for connecting USB-capable peripheral devices to a host computer, and a communication protocol that supports serial data transfers between a host system and USB-capable peripherals.

IrDA

Infrared Data Association (IrDA) is a system of exchanging information between computers by using infrared transmissions without a cable connection. IrDA can be used between any two devices that support IrDA, such as computers and printers. Windows XP Professional supports printing by using an IrDA device.

IrDA is a point-to-point protocol based on TCP/IP and Winsock APIs. IrDA can be used to exchange data between devices other than Windows that use the IrDA protocol. IrDA exchanges data at rates approaching the rates that are provided by LAN connections.

IEEE 1284.4 Protocol

Windows XP Professional supports IEEE 1284.4, a protocol that allows Windows 2000 print servers to send data to multiple parts of a single multifunction peripheral (MFP) device. IEEE 1284.4 is a driver that multiplexes data so that the operating system can communicate with multiple functions of an MFP over a single connection.

IEEE 1284.4 is installed when an IEEE 1284.4-enabled device is detected. No manual installation or configuration is required.




Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit 2003
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit 2003
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 338
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