Canon BJ-30 Line Printers Versus Page Printers, Function Settings, Line Printers and Processing

FUNCTION Settings

The printer’s FUNCTION settings allow you to set the default printer configuration settings, such as horizontal print position, text lines per page, character sets, and so on. See Chapter 8, Customizing the Printer, for details.

Line Printers Versus Page Printers

Line Printers

Your Canon BJ-30 Bubble Jet Printer is an example of a line printer. Line printers, sometimes called band printers, process and print information one line (band) at a time. The information sent from the computer to the printer indicates exactly how each line should look and where each dot is positioned. This information is similar to a bitmapped graphic that specifies positions of individual dots of ink.

Page Printers

Page printers process and print information one page at a time. The information sent from the computer to the printer is sometimes in simple ASCII code, or more often, in a page description language. This information is a set of instructions that the printer must interpret to determine where it should position each dot. Some common page description languages include PostScript, CaPSL, and HP PCL.

Line Printers and Processing

With line printers almost all of the processing burden falls on the computer. The printer needs to do very little additional processing of the information it receives from the computer—it simply executes the instructions it receives. This means a line printer needs very little processing power and memory.

Because most of the processing takes place on the computer, the speed of the computer’s processor (386, 486, Pentium) and the amount of random access memory (RAM) on your computer have a significant influence on printing speed.

The faster the processor, and the more RAM you have, the faster you can print on your BJ-30 Bubble Jet Printer.

Setting Up the Printer

Chapter 2 Setting Up the Printer 27