Printing protocols (Printer Basics)

Since the 70s, a time when printing was just committing ASCII text to paper line by line, the LPD protocol is used to control the printer's output. Printing became a more and more sophisticated job by a growing variety of text formatting options and the addition of pictures,
today even of a photo-realistic quality. This is why time and again each manufacturer added his own extensions to LPD and the different specifications usually were incompatible to each other.
Now a new protocol is ahead, the Internet Printing Protocol IPP. IPP is on its way to establish a common standard for all the different printing devices and operating systems and therefore will enable comfortable printing across any network from LAN to the Internet. IPP bases on HTTP, the well-known WWW standard. In the same way HTTP transmits web pages containing text, pictures, sounds, script code etc. from a server to a client or e. g. a form's data from the client to the server, HTTP is able to transmit any kind of data needed for network printing. Clients, printers, print jobs, and even administration assignments and status queries can be identified by URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers). A HTML based user interface can make printers and their configuration options available by an ordinary web browser. Apart from the network abilities IPP will make several new features available:
• A client doesn't need to send a file to the printer (push method),
the client simply directs the printer to fetch the file from where it is
stored (pull method).
• A client is able to find any of the network's printers, even when a
printer is unknown to the client so far.
• A client is able to get detailed information about a certain printer.
• A printer is able to start a print job before all of the print job's data
have arrived.
• A single print job can consist of several documents.
• Printers and print servers can be configurated from any point of
the network.
• Printing across a network, especially across the Internet, will be
save, because transmitted files can be encoded and users can be
obliged to authenticate themselves.
Today already about a hundred products from printers to applications provide IPP abilities and a first IPP application, CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System), is available for UNIX based networks.

web page printing (Printer Basics)

Printing Web pages is not a simple job. Usually Web pages are designed to be displayed on a screen only. Therefore you have to face the following problems:
• The screen’s format differs from the format of a sheet of paper, even when you use the landscape format.
• Often Web pages show bright letters in front of a dark background.
A printout may need much toner or ink as well as the printout might
be difficult to read.
• The pictures or graphics on a Web page normally have a resolution optimised for the display on a screen. As printers work with a
higher resolution, the outcome might be of a much lower quality.
• Information referring to the same topic is often spread over several
Web pages connected by hyperlinks, so you might have to print
every single Web page individually.
The problems of printing Web pages are known to Web designers. Some of them might offer you two versions of a Web page, one optimised for being displayed on the screen and one for printing. If you want to print out a Web page, look out for a link that leads you to
the print version. Some problems, e.g. the lower resolution of online pictures, cannot be solved. Certain problems can be solved if you choose the right options offered by your Web browser.
Different browsers offer different options. The following explains the most important options offered by Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.
Before you actually start the print job, you can choose certain options
either in the Page Setup Dialog or in the Print Dialog.
Open the Page Setup or the Print Dialog from the File menu. Both
dialogs may offer some of the printer options besides the ones
referring specially to Websites. Choose,
• which information has to appear in the header and the footer of the
page, e.g. the URL or the title of the Web page
• whether the Web page has to be scaled to fit the paper format
• whether the background has to be printed or not and whether the
letters are to be printed in black.
Web pages containing frames:
• choose if only the marked frame is to be printed, all frames should
be printed individually or the whole page as it is displayed on the
screen.
Web pages containing hyperlinks:
• choose whether the corresponding Web pages are to be printed
within the same print job.

what is spooling (Printer Basics)

Spooling is a usefull option if you want to print a large amount of data. This function saves the print jobs to hard disk in a queue before sending them to the printer. Consider spooling as the traffic controller of printing—it keeps all the print jobs from trying to print at the same time.
By default, spooling is enabled in Widows xp.
You can choose two options:
1. start imediate printing
2. Wait until last page is spooled.
An analogy for these choices is the actions you can take in a grocery store’s cashier line. Let’s say you have an entire cart full of groceries and the guy behind you has only a few things. Even if you’ve started loading your groceries onto the belt, as long as the cashier hasn’t started with your items, you can choose to let the person with fewer items go before you, or you can make him wait. If the cashier has already started totaling your groceries, then you don’t have that choice. Windows XP Professional spooling options allow you to configure your print environment similarly.
In the Advanced tab, you can leave the Start Printing Immediately option selected, or you can
choose the Start Printing After Last Page Is Spooled option. If you choose the latter option,
a smaller print job that finishes spooling first will print before your print job, even if your
job started spooling before it did. If you specify Start Printing Immediately, the smaller job will
have to wait until your print job is complete.
The other spooling option is Print Directly to the Printer, which bypasses spooling altogether.
This option doesn’t work well in a multiuser environment where multiple print jobs are sent
to the same device. However, it is useful in troubleshooting printer problems. If you can print to
a print device directly, but you can’t print through the spooler, then you know that your spooler
is corrupt or has other problems.

As I described before, when a user prints a document, the print job creates a temporary file on the disk for the document being printer. After that the application can be used for other tasks and the system sends the temporary file to the print device.
In windows, the print spool service s responsible for managing the print environment. If yo can't delete a print job from the print queue than you many have a corrupt queue.
This problem may be solved by restarting the print spooler services.Follow these steps to perform the task:
1. Go to Start Menu
2. Control Pannel
3. Performance an maintinance
4. Administrator toools
Actually when you restart the printing spool services, you are going to reboot the printing envoiroment.
Sometimes, you may want to move the printer spooler folder. The folder location should be changed if you are facing printing problem in windows and there is no hardware problem. Also if you are running out of space on drive C, spool directroy should be moved to another partition. To change the spool dierctory:
1.Start Menu
2. Printer and Faxes
3. Choose file
4. Server properties
5. Click advance tab
6. Enter the path of the new spool folder

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Printer classification

Printer classification based on their technology. Typical printer types are:
1. Dot matrix printer
2. Ink-jet printer
3. Laser printer
4. Thermal printer
Dot Matrix Printer
A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer refers to a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like a typewriter.
Dot-matrix technology uses a series or matrix of pins to create printed dots arranged to form characters on a piece of paper. The speed at which a dot-matrix printer prints is measured in the number of characters it can produce per second. Unlike a type-writer or daisy wheel printer, letters are drawn out of a dot matrix, and thus, varied fonts and arbitrary graphics can be produced. Because the printing involves mechanical pressure, these printers can create carbon copies and carbonless copies.
The print head mechanism pushes each pin into the ribbon, which then
strikes the paper. The original dot-matrix print heads had 7 pins, while newer,
letter-quality print heads use 24 pins to produce near letter quality (NLQ) documents. Each pin is driven forward by the power of a tiny electromagnet or solenoid, either directly or through small levers (pawls).
Dot-matrix printers are called impact printers because the printing mechanism physically strikes the page. The continual motion of the pins through the print head creates a ton of heat, so avoid touching the print head after printing a handful of pages or more. A hot print head can give you a nasty burn.
Paper moves through a dot-matrix printer using a tractor-feed mechanism. Spoked wheels located on each side of the paper feed mechanism move the paper. The spokes on the outer edges of the wheels fit into holes on the sides of specially designed continuous form paper. As the wheels turn, they pull the paper through the printer.
Because impact printers physically strike the page, you can use them to create multi part forms with ease.Many offices and government agencies use them for that very reason. Although impact printers have been replaced in most homes and offices by newer, sexier inkjet and laser printers , they still retain a substantial portion of the market in their niches.
Advantages:
1.They can print on multi-part stationary or make carbon copies
2. Low printing cost
3. They can bear environmental conditions.
4. Long life

Disadvantage
1. Noise
2. Low resolution
3. Very limiter Color performance
4. Low speed  
Thermal Printers:
Thermal printers use a thermal ribbon which is soaked with a wax type ink which is melted and then transferred to the paper.
In some thermal printers a thermo sensitive paper is necessary. In this case the paper passes over a thermal head and the carbon coating turns black in the heated areas. Thermal printers have low noise, low cast while they are also compact. They are also known for their low printing speed and high running cast.
Ink Jet Printers
Ink jet printers spray a very small amount of ink onto the media. This is done by using a piezoelectric element. When voltage are applied to the element, in bends and creates a pressure wave to force out a drop of ink. Ink jet printers have low cast, compact size, low noise. Their color printing quality is affordable. Some ink jet printers may require special paper. Usually speed of ink jet printers is slower than laser printers.
Laser Printers:
Laser printing is the most advance technology. In Laser printing, a computer sends data to the printer. Printer translates this data into printable image data. This kind of printers uses xerographic principle. A laser beam discharges photo sensitive drum. A Latent Image is created on drum, during development process toner is attracted to the drum surface and then transferred to the paper.
Laser printing quality is high. These printers have low noise, high speed while they are more expensive than ink jet or dot matrix printer and they are generally large in size.