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 upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

). An overlapping term is printer control language, which includes Hewlett-Packard's

Printer Command Language Printer Command Language, more commonly referred to as PCL, is a page description language (PDL) developed by Hewlett-Packard as a printer protocol and has become a ''de facto'' industry standard. Originally developed for early inkjet print ...

(PCL).

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, ...

is one of the most noted page description languages. The

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

adaptation of the PDL is the page description markup language. Page description languages are text (human-readable) or binary data streams, usually intermixed with text or graphics to be printed. They are distinct from graphics application programming interfaces (APIs) such as GDI and

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...

that can be called by software to generate graphical output.

Notable examples

Various page description languages exist: * AFP, Advanced Function Presentation ( <