"Bruce Sanderson" wrote in message
...
Thank you for the complement re my web site, I appreciate it! If you
haven't already, you might find the Glossary informative -
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/Glossary.htm.
You are welcome.
I trust the details below shed additional light on this subject, although
you may know some of it already.
A "Printer Driver" is a (usually) small piece of software whose job in
life is to translate the function calls made and data provided by an
application program (using the standard Windows API set - usually the
subset referred to as GDI) into a data stream that the actual print device
(physical printer) can interpret to actually render the desired image on
the paper (or other media).
GDI is a generic windows driver with limitted functionality that is used
when the manufacture driver is missing.
Each Printer Driver is identified by its Name. This name shows up in the
"Driver" box on the Advanced tab of the printer's Properties page. Also,
the Printer Driver Names are listed in the "Printers" column in the dialog
box (e.g. in Add Printer Wizard) where one is instructed to "select the
manufacturer and model of your printer" (actual text may vary between
versions of Windows).
The "printer driver" is not "represented by the logical printer". These
are two different object categories. A given logical printer can have its
"Driver" attribute set to the Name of any Printer Driver and this can be
change on the Advanced tab of the logical printer's Properties dialog.
Each logical printer (sometimes referred to as simply "printer" or "print
queue" or "printer object")
As I said, Microsoft came to its senses and changed the terminology again:
A physical printer is now referred as simply "printer".
on a Windows computer can have exactly one
Printer Driver, identified by its Name associated with it for use on that
computer.
What about when printer x breaks down and you redirect the logical printer
to printer y by changing the port, doesn't it use a different driver name,
the one associated with printer y?
If the logical printer is "shared", on can associate Additional
Printer Drivers with that logical printer. Each and every one of those
Additional Printer Drivers will have a Name that is identical to the one
specified in the "Driver" attribute of the logical printer and must be for
a platform other than the one the logical printer is shared from.
When the Add Printer Wizard is used to "add a printer" (a "logical
printer" as you point out), one instructed to "select the make and model
of your printer". What is actually done during this process is that the
Printer Driver to be used is selected using the Printer Driver's Name as
the identifier. Of course, this association is not completely arbitrary -
if an inappropriate Printer Driver is selected, the physical printer
(device) will not understand the print data stream correctly and will
either print garbage or perhaps fail to print anything.
Sometimes a certain (say PS) driver is not available for a certain printer
(say KonicaMinolta) and you try a driver from a different manufacture (say
from HP) to solve the problem.
In every case I've seen, the Make and Model of the print device, as
designated by the manufacturer, for which a given Printer Driver will
produce a data stream that Model can render has the Make and Model of that
print device as part of the Name of the Printer Driver. This makes sense,
but is not a technical requirement - the Printer Driver Name could be
anything.
The situation is further confused because the default name used for a
logical printer object is the name of the Printer Driver selected during
the Add Printer process. This often leads users to "thinking" of the
physical printer, the logical printer and the Printer Driver as being a
single, inseparable construct, which is not true.
One can change:
1. the name of the "logical printer" (usually in Windows referred to
simply as "Printer")
not anymore, you need to change that
2. which Printer Driver is to be used by a "logical printer"
But one can not (in the normal course of events) change the Name of a
Printer Driver - this is specified in the files that comprise that
particular Printer Driver.
I'm aware of the following "printer languages" (there may be others):
HP PCL (5e and 6 are the most common versions today)
PS
HP GL/2
XPS (a new printer language introduced with Vista)
AFP (unique to IBM mainframe connected printers)
ASCII - produced by the printer drivers named "Generic / Text Only"
Many printers implement more than one "printer language". For example
essentially the entire line of HP LaserJet printers (colour as well as
black and white), can render print from either Adobe Postscript (PS) or
Hewlett Packard Printer Control Language (PCL) imbedded in the data stream
sent to them. In many cases, from the user's perspective, it is
immaterial whether the Printer (Logical Printer Object) is configured to
use a PS or PCL driver variant - the printed output will be essentially
identical. However, there are occasionally instances where the actual
printed output from the same application will appear slightly different
when a PS driver variant is used as opposed to the PCL driver variant.
Sometimes these small differences are important, so it is then important
to select the right one. If one application (or data file read by the
application) creates "incorrect" output using the PS driver variant and
"correct" output with the PCL variant, then it is necessary to ensure that
the correct variant is available.
The printer language first of all highly depends on the application used to
create the file and it's another issue if the printer supports true post
script or embedded. As a rule of thumb, all adobe applications like the PS
which is adobe printer description language and the rest, especially Quark
express and Microsoft applications like PCL which is also faster that PS.
However, PS gives better print quality, but an average user might not notice
the difference.
You are correct, I do live in BC.
Hope to meet you someday
Thanks for the INFO and if you do not mind I have a question related to
Microsoft outlook.
Printing e-mails from Outlook is always in color although the selected
printer has the setting for Black and White.
I believe it has to do with some settings within Outlook express, and I was
wondering if you are aware of this.
Thanks again for the INFO!
PS: I also use shaw but the newsgroup
"Microsoft.public.windows.vista.print_fax_scan " is not available to me.
Bruce Sanderson
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders
It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.
"eager" wrote in message
news:9EIyj.37800$pM4.1282@pd7urf1no...
"Bruce Sanderson" wrote in message
...
2. That depends on what the objective is. If the objective is to have
drivers for different platforms (e.g. x64, x86, Itanium) then definitely
the Alternate Drivers (from the Properties, Sharing tab) is the way to
do that. However, if the objective is to provide drivers with different
NAMES (e.g. PCL5e vs PCL6 vs PS), the Alternate Drivers feature won't do
it.
This is out of question, because it's stupid to try to have one logical
printer for both PCL and PS. They are totally different beasts.
All the
drivers installed using Alternate Drivers will have exactly the same
Driver Name - this is a fundamental concept in the Point and Print
architecture - the client driver must have exactly the same Driver Name
as that on the print server for a given "printer" defined on the print
server.
I do not know what you mean by the driver name. Microsoft finally came to
its senses and changed the terminology again (although in some MS exams
the terminology has not been updated yet); the print device is now called
a (physical) printer and the driver is represented by the logical
printer. Anyway, the client logical printer is a network printer, exactly
the same one on the server...
Also, only
one driver per platform can be "installed" (associated with) each
printer object on the print server.
If, for some reason (e.g. special features, workaround certain types of
problems with drivers, special forms), then adding a second printer on
the print server assigned to the same Port, with the desired driver
specified is the technique to use.
That's how it should be, in the first place; different logical printers
for the same physical printer. This way you specify who should print
first and who should wait, who should print color and who should print
just black and white, etc. That's a common practice.
An example might be for a printer used to print
cheques, that is also used for "normal" printing (whether or not a
driver with a different name is required). A second printer object can
be created that is normally "paused". The cheques can be "printed" from
the application to the "cheque printing printer". When the time comes
to actually print the cheques, the "normal" printer can be paused, the
special cheque forms put into the printer's tray and the "cheque
printing printer" "resumed:". After the cheques are printed, the
procedure can be reversed to allow "normal" printing.
3. Perhaps I didn't make myself as clear as I could have. Using a
locally installed printer, redirected to a shared printer, is
essentially, a technique of last choice. I would not recommend it as a
generic solution where there are a lot of users that require different
drivers (i.e. drivers with different names) for some peculiar reason.
However, in some situations, it is the only method that will work. If
there is a special case for a particular user, then using a local
printer redirected to the shared printer may be the method to use.
In some cases, it is not possible to add Alternate Drivers for some
platforms for drivers with specific names. For example, the driver name
for the HP Color LaserJet 4500:
on Windows Server 2003 R2 32 bit the driver name is HP Color LaserJet
4500
on Vista 64 bit the driver names available are HP Color LaserJet 4500
PCL 5 and HP Color LaserJet 4500 PCL6
Again, I do not know what you mean by the driver name. you can rename the
logical drivers to whatever name you want ...
This means that you can not add an Alternate Driver on a Windows Server
2003 R2 32 bit print server that can be used by a Vista 64 bit client
(unless you happen to have the installation CD for Windows Server 2003
R2 64 bit - then you can work around this problem).
I built the pages at
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/AddDrivertoOldOS.htm and
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/NetPrinterNoPP.htm precisely because of
problems that I and others encountered with printer drivers from various
manufacturers that don't work together using the standard Point and
Print technology. They were a result of experience with Windows XP
clients and Windows NT 4 print servers, but the same solutions have been
found necessary with other combinations of platforms, or in some cases
the same platform, for certain printers as well. Unfortunately not all
printer driver builders provide installation packages that conform to
the Point and Print architecture, although the situation is definitly
better today than it was when Windows XP was new.
Very interesting and informative links. As a matter of fact I had a link
to your site into my favourites already!
You have done a fantastic job and I am honored to communicate with you
via this thread. It looks like you live in BC.
The newsgroups:
microsoft.public.windows.vista.print_fax_scan and
microsoft.public.windowsxp.print_fax
are a better place to discuss printing issues - there's quite a few
knowledgeable people that post there frequently.
Thanks, I will subscribe there as my job is printing related.
Have a nice day!
--
Bruce Sanderson
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders
It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.
"eager" wrote in message
news:PVoyj.32190$w94.8102@pd7urf2no...
"Bruce Sanderson" wrote in message
...
To expand on what Marcin said:
1. usually, the printer on the print server is configured so that
"users" do not have the "Manage Printers" permission on the printers.
This means that they can not change the Printer Driver that is defined
for the printer.
I agree
2. When different drivers are required for some reason, create two
printers on the print server, one for each driver, share them both and
instruct the user to select the appropriate one based on need.
I disagree. Creating different logical printers for the same printer is
related to the priorities and special features that some of the users
need. You do not need to create different logical printers when
different drivers are required. Use the additional drivers tab for this
purpose.
3. an alternative, which might be viable for small environments or a
small number of users with very special requirements, is to add the
printer locally on the workstation and re-direct it to the printer
shared from the print server. See the numbered steps at
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/NetPrinterNoPP.htm.
I disagree on this one too. Local logical printers are recomended in
workgroup environment, but if you use a logical printer on the server
you do not need to. You might need to change the spool folder ....
--
Bruce Sanderson
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders
It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong
question.
"Eric" wrote in message
...
After a printer is installed and published in Active Directory, is
there a way to let an end user change the driver?
If I were to install 2 drivers for the same printer is there a way we
could set it up so the user could choose what driver they wanted to
use?
Thanks
Eric