Study Lab

Don't miss the Study Lab materials found on the CD accompanying this book. Each Study Lab is tailored to the individual chapters in this book, meaning that you'll quickly be able to determine which topics you understand well enough to pass the exam and which topics need more study. The Study Labs are presented in printable PDF format so that you can take them with you to study at work, on the road, or even in your car just before test time!

The Absolute Minimum

• When printing in Windows, the printer is controlled by Windows and print jobs are held in a print queue before being sent to the printer.

• Character/line printers can start printing as soon as they receive the start of the document.

• Page printers must receive the entire page (including fonts and graphics) before they can start printing.

• TrueType is a popular scalable font technology; Windows has native support for TrueType since version 3.1.

• HP LaserJet printers use PCL (Printer Control Language) as their native language; it is widely emulated by other brands.

• Adobe PostScript has more powerful graphics features, but requires PostScript language commands be sent to activate printing.

• Dot-matrix printers usually have 9-pin or 24-pin printheads. They are best suited for multipart forms.

• Inkjet printers typically support CMYK printing with two or more ink tanks (black/all colors or one for each color ).

• Laser and LED printers both use the EP process to print, but LED printers use an LED array to write data to the imaging cartridge instead of a laser.

• The EP (electrophotographic) process has six steps: cleaning, conditioning, writing, developing, transferring, and fusing.

• Replacing the toner cartridge solves many problems with most laser printers because most of the imaging process happens inside the toner cartridge.

• Direct thermal printing uses heat-sensitive paper, whereas thermal transfer printing uses ribbons and can support multicolor printing.

• Dye-sublimation printers use a thermal process that turns dyes into gas to print continuous-tone photographs.

• Solid-ink printers are page printers that use separate CMYK ink blocks to print the page.

• Printer drivers control printers under Windows.