Third-Party Vendor Printing Solutions

Even with all of the advancements and improved functionality, there are still times when a third-party application is needed to optimize printer management. Third-party printing tools can reduce administrative load, increase performance, and simplify operation for end users. The Citrix Universal Print Driver (UPD), first released with FR1, was Citrix's first major step toward simplified printing. With the release of FR3 Citrix has improved the UPD. This section discusses the Citrix UPD along with the following third-party printing solutions:

• ThinPrint v5.5

• triCerat Simplify Printing v2

• FutureLink UniPrint XP Server v2.24

The Citrix UPD is a PCL4 or PCL5 printer driver implementation that also works with non-PCL printers such as PostScript and proprietary printers. Print jobs are rasterized by the UPD's Interpreter on the client side and are subsequently processed by the native printer drivers.

FutureLink UniPrint XP Server v2.24

The UniPrint XP Server provides universal printing capability by generating PDF files and sending them to the local client for printing. The UniPrint XP Server component is installed on the Terminal Server and the UniPrint client, and Adobe Acrobat 4.0 or later and the ICA Client are installed on the client machine. The server component installs a Universal Print Driver that has a user-selectable virtual printer. Once a print job is submitted to the UniPrint UPD, the server component converts this print job to PDF format, sends it to the client, and uses the client's locally installed print driver to print using the client's default local printer.

UniPrint XP Server provides three PDF compression techniques when creating print jobs. Note that the supported compression techniques are susceptible to degradation of image quality. This is most noticeable when printing documents that are rich in color. Additionally, font consistency can be a problem whenever the destination client does not have the document's required fonts causing font substitution. To avoid this, turn on UniPrint's embed font property to convert the text to an image. The caveat is that rendering text as an image will increase print job size. For more information on UniPrint XP Server, visit www.futurelink.net.

ThinPrint v5.5

ThinPrint provides core printing functionality along with print job compression and session-based, bandwidth control driver-free printing via its ThinPrint Output Gateway (TPOG) printer module. The TPOG printer on the server is mapped to remote client printers automatically with ThinPrint AutoConnect by defining a template definition, class definition, or manually by renaming the TPOG printer name to explicitly point to a specific remote-client printer. ThinPrint's patented Driver Free Printing technology makes it possible to transmit print data without a printer driver installed on the server. The TPOG simulates a printer driver and sends compressed print data in a printer-dependent format to the local print system. There, the print data is rendered by the local printer driver. The advantages to this technology are obvious: central administration no longer needs to change printer drivers when client printers are added or changed; printer driver conflicts with the deployed software platform no longer occur; CPU load is reduced because of print job rendering; all printers on all ports are supported. Thus both users and administrators benefit from considerable improvements. ThinPrint also allows the use of a print server in your server farm even when the client is separated from the host by NAT and firewall issues with the Virtual Channel Gateway. Additionally, over 90 percent of the thin client manufacturers (as well as many print server, network printers, PDA, and cell phone manufacturers), embed the ThinPrint client directly into their hardware.

triCerat ScrewDrivers v2

Simplify Printing v2™ is based on the well-known ScrewDrivers™ architecture. It is a universal printer driver that hooks into the Windows Print Spooler Service to provide full functionality of local printers. It sends print jobs in the EMF format, which is the native Windows Spooling format. Once the job is compressed and sent to the client side plug-in, it is decompressed and rendered to the local client printer.

On the Terminal Server, the ScrewDrivers printer driver mimics the standard Windows printer options and capabilities of the client printer, such as resolution, paper size, and available trays. Printers are built automatically and allow users to have a seamless printing experience.

Simplify Printing builds printers seamlessly during login and reconnection to sessions through a query of the local client printers. On logout/disconnect, printers are automatically deleted. Administrators can specify whether only the client's default printer is built, or if a set number or all of the client's printers are built. Users can specify which printers they want to have priority, as well as which printers they do not want built. Users are never required to do any administration if the default options are acceptable. Other options such as bandwidth control can be set on a server-wide or connection-specific basis through the server and/or client control panel. For more information, visit www.tricerat.com.

Table 18-1 provides a comparison of third-party print utilities.

Table 18-1: Third-Party Printing Utility Summary

Features	Citrix UPD	Simplify Printing v2	ThinPrint v5.5	UniPrint XP Server v2.24
Resolution	600 dpi	Any (based on printer manufacturer driver)	Any (printer manufacturer driver)	Up to 1200 dpi
Metafile Support	PCL4, PCL5c, or PostScript Metafile	EMF	EMF	PDF
Color Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Network Protocols	ICA	ICA, RDP5, Native TCP/IP	ICA, RDP5, Native TCP/IP	ICA, RDP5, Native TCP/IP
Compression on transmission	ICA-based compression	Yes	Yes	Yes
Printer Auto-Creation	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Supported Client Platforms	Win32 ICA Clients (Win95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, Windows XP) version 6.20 or later. Feature Release 1 is required on the server. Macintosh OS X is supported on client version 6.30 and Linux clients are supported with ICA client 7.00.	95/98/Me/ NT/2000/ XP/2003, some embedded NT/XP	Windows 3.1, 95/98/Me, NT, 2000, CE, XP, Linux, UNIX, OS/2 (Win16), Smartphone, PocketPC 2002, Symbian	Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Embedded NT and XP, and Macintosh
Client-Side System Requirements	ICA Client version 6.20 or later. 600 dpi and color are not available until the 7.00 client version.	ICA 6.X and higher (ICA 4.x on request), RDP 5.0	Valid ThinPrint client for selected OS. Win32 OS is required for "Driver Free Printing"	ICA Client version 6.20 or later, PDF reader
Server-Side System Requirements	Terminal Services, MetaFrame XP FR3	Terminal Services, MetaFrame optional (1.8 and later supported)	Terminal Services, MetaFrame (any version supported)	Terminal Services, MetaFrame optional (1.8 and later supported)
Bandwidth Control	Yes—Global setting	Yes—Global	Yes—Global and per port	No
Size of Spool File	Large	Small	Small	Medium

Deciding on the Best Third-Party Printing Utility

The only way to select the most suitable solution for a target environment is to perform a similar performance analysis of the solutions being considered. However, based on the results of our tests, the following guidelines can be used:

• Allocate sufficient bandwidth for printing as it will help reduce sporadic and poor response times due to printing. Use the equation located in the "Printer Bandwidth Management" section, earlier in this chapter.

• Use PostScript Level 2 or PCL 6 printers whenever possible as these formats generate smaller print jobs.

• Use black-and-white or grayscale as the default color for colored printers.

• Configure the defaults of all printers to run at low resolution unless the application requires high-resolution prints.

• For a small footprint (system and network overhead) solution, consider using UniPrint XP Server since it generates small print jobs.

• For a practical solution, consider using Citrix UPD. At no cost, Citrix UPD provides good performance with support for printing-related bandwidth management.

• For good cross-platform support, consider using ThinPrint since it supports Linux, UNIX, OS/2, and Win16 operating systems.