Printer Command Language, more commonly referred to as PCL, is a

page description language In digital printing, a page description language (PDL) is a computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap (or generally raster graphics). An overlapping term is printer control la ...

(PDL) developed by Hewlett-Packard as a

printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person or a company * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * James ...

protocol and has become a ''

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industry standard ''Industry Standard'' is the sixth studio album by the Dixie Dregs, released in 1982. This was the second of two albums released under the moniker The Dregs, and is their only album featuring vocals (by Alex Ligertwood of Santana and Patrick Si ...

. Originally developed for early

inkjet Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpens ...

printers in 1984, PCL has been released in varying levels for

thermal A thermal column (or thermal) is a rising mass of buoyant air, a convective current in the atmosphere, that transfers heat energy vertically. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of Earth's surface from solar radiation, and are an example ...

matrix Matrix most commonly refers to: * ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise ** ''The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film ** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchis ...

, and

page Page most commonly refers to: * Page (paper), one side of a leaf of paper, as in a book Page, PAGE, pages, or paging may also refer to: Roles * Page (assistance occupation), a professional occupation * Page (servant), traditionally a young m ...

printers. HP-GL/2 and

PJL PJL may refer to: * Pakistan Junior League, a defunct Pakistani professional 20-over cricket league * Printer Job Language, a page description language developed by Hewlett-Packard * PJL, the Ministry of Railways station code for Palijani railway ...

are supported by later versions of PCL. PCL is occasionally and incorrectly said to be an abbreviation for ''Printer Control Language'' which actually is another term for

PCL levels 1 through 5 overview

PCL levels 1 through 5e/5c are command-based languages using control sequences that are processed and interpreted in the order they are received. At a consumer level, PCL data streams are generated by a print driver. PCL output can also be easily generated by custom applications. *PCL 1 was introduced in 1984 on the HP ThinkJet 2225 and provides basic text and graphics printing with a maximum resolution of 150 dpi (dots per inch). *PCL 1+ was released with the HP QuietJet 2227. *PCL 2 added Electronic Data Processing/Transaction functionality. *PCL 3 was introduced in 1984 with the original HP

LaserJet LaserJet as a brand name identifies the line of laser printers marketed by the American computer company Hewlett-Packard (HP). The HP LaserJet was the first popular desktop laser printer. Canon supplies both mechanisms and cartridges for most HP ...

. This added support for

bitmap In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a particular bitmapping application: t ...

fonts and increased the maximum resolution to 300 dpi. Other products with PCL 3 support were the HP DeskJet ink jet printer, HP 2932 series matrix printers and HP RuggedWriter 2235 matrix printers. PCL 3 is still in use on several

impact printer In computing, a printer is a peripheral machine which makes a persistent representation of graphics or text, usually on paper. While most output is human-readable, bar code printers are an example of an expanded use for printers. Diffe ...

s which replaced the obsolete HP models. *PCL 3+ (mono) and PCL 3c+ (color) are used on later HP DeskJet and HP PhotoSmart products. *PCL 3GUI is used in the HP DesignJet and some DeskJet series printers. It uses a compressed

raster Raster may refer to: * Raster graphics, graphical techniques using arrays of pixel values * Raster graphics editor, a computer program * Raster scan, the pattern of image readout, transmission, storage, and reconstruction in television and compu ...

format that is not compatible with standard PCL 3. *PCL 4 was introduced on the HP LaserJet Plus in 1985, adding macros, larger bitmapped fonts and graphics. PCL 4 is still popular for many applications. *PCL 5 was released on the HP LaserJet III in March 1990, adding

Intellifont Intellifont is a scalable font technology developed by Tom Hawkins at Compugraphic in Wilmington, Massachusetts during the late 1980s, the patent for which was granted to Hawkins in 1987. Intellifont fonts were hinted on a Digital Equipment Co ...

font scaling (developed by

Compugraphic Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, just a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugrap ...

, now part of Agfa), outline fonts and HP-GL/2 (vector) graphics. *PCL 5e (PCL 5 enhanced) was released on the HP LaserJet 4 in October 1992 and added bi-directional communication between the printer and the PC and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

fonts. *PCL 5c introduced color support on the HP PaintJet 300XL and HP Color LaserJet in 1992.

PCL 6 overview

HP introduced PCL 6 around 1995 with the HP LaserJet 4000 series printers. It consists of: *PCL 6 "Enhanced": An object-oriented PDL optimized for printing from

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

interfaces such as

and compressed to optimize throughput. Formerly known as PCL XL or PXL. *PCL 6 Standard: Equivalent to PCL 5e or PCL 5c, intended to provide backward compatibility. *Font synthesis: Provides scalable fonts, font management and storage of forms and fonts. PCL 6 "Enhanced" architecture was altered to be more modular and to be more easily modified for future HP printers, that it prints complex graphics faster, that it reduces network traffic, and has higher quality. In early implementations, HP did not market PCL 6 well, thus causing some confusion in terminology. PCL XL was renamed to PCL 6 Enhanced, but many third-party products still use the older term. Some products may claim to be PCL 6 compliant, but may not include the PCL 5 backward compatibility. PCL 6 Enhanced is primarily generated by the

printer driver In computers, a printer driver or a print processor is a piece of software on a computer that converts the data to be printed to a format that a printer can understand. The purpose of printer drivers is to allow applications to do printing withou ...

s under

and

CUPS CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a host that can accept print jobs ...

. Due to its structure and compression methodology, custom applications rarely use it directly. PCL 6 Enhanced is a stack-based, object-oriented protocol, similar to

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

. However, it is restricted to binary encoding as opposed to PostScript, which can be sent either as binary code or as plain text. The plain-text commands and code examples shown in the PCL programming documentation are meant to be compiled with a utility like HP's JetASM before being sent to a printer. PCL 6 Enhanced is designed to match the drawing model of Windows GDI. In this way, the Windows printer driver simply passes through GDI commands with very little modification, leading to faster return-to-application times. Microsoft has extended this concept with its next-generation XPS format, and printer implementations of XPS are being developed. This is not a new idea: it is comparable with

Display Postscript Display PostScript (or DPS) is a 2D graphics engine system for computers which uses the PostScript (PS) imaging model and language (originally developed for computer printing) to generate on-screen graphics. To the basic PS system, DPS adds a num ...

and Apple's Quartz, and is in contrast to "GDI Printers" where a compressed bitmap is sent to the printer.

PCL 6 class revisions

Class 1.1

*Draw tools: Support drawing lines, arcs/ellipses/chords, (rounded) rectangles, polygons, Bézier paths, clipped paths, raster images, scanlines, raster operations. *Color handling: Support 1/4/8-bit palettes, RGB/grey color space. Support custom halftone patterns (max 256 patterns). *Compression: Supports RLE. *Units of measurement: Inch, millimeter, tenth of millimeter. *Paper handling: Support custom or predefined sets of paper size, including common Letter, Legal, A4, etc. Can choose paper from manual feed, trays, cassettes. Paper can be duplexed horizontally or vertically. Paper can be oriented in portrait, landscape, or 180 degree rotation of the former two. *Font: Supports bitmap or TrueType fonts, 8 or 16-bit code points. Choosing character set uses different symbol set code from PCL 5. When bitmap font is used, many scaling commands are unavailable. When TrueType font is used, variable length descriptors, continuation blocks are not supported. Outline font can be rotated, scaled, or sheared.

Class 2.0

*Compression: Added JPEG compression. A Proprietary variant of JPEG-like compression optimized for integer hardware called JetReady is used in a few HP Color Laserjet models (at the time of writing, 3 models, CLJ 3500, 3550, 3600). Those models require Class 3.0 inputs. *Paper handling: Media can redirected to different output bins (up to 256). Added A6 and Japanese B6 preset media sizes. Added Third cassette preset, 248 external tray media sources. *Font: Text can be written vertically.

Class 2.1

*Color handling: Added Color matching feature. *Compression: Added Delta Row. *Paper handling: Orientation, media size are optional when declaring a new page. Added B5, JIS 8K, JIS 16K, JIS Exec paper sizes.

Class 2.2

*Compression: Added

JFIF The JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) is an image file format standard published as ITU-T Recommendation T.871 and ISO/IEC 10918-5. It defines supplementary specifications for the container format that contains the image data encoded with the J ...

Class 3.0

*Color handling: Allow using different halftone settings for vector or raster graphics, text. Supports adaptive halftoning. *Protocol: Supports PCL passthrough, allowing PCL 5 features to be used by PCL 6 streams. However, some PCL 6 states are not preserved when using this feature. *Font: Supports PCL fonts. JetReady printers (CLJ 3500/3550/3600) use undocumented extensions but otherwise mandate Class 3.0 inputs.

PJL overview

PJL (

Printer Job Language Printer Job Language (PJL) is a method developed by Hewlett-Packard for switching printer languages at the job level, and for status readback between the printer and the host computer. PJL adds job level controls, such as printer language switchin ...

) was introduced on the HP LaserJet IIIsi. PJL adds job level controls, such as printer language switching, job separation, environment commands, status feedback, device attendance and file system commands.

References

External links

* * * * * {{cite web , url=http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas1ba0863cfa6463903862569c10078c903 , title=List of HP printers and PCL levels supported , publisher= IBM , access-date=2012-03-02 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130501032227/http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas1ba0863cfa6463903862569c10078c903 , archive-date=2013-05-01 , url-status=dead HP software Page description languages