Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations gkittelson on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

PCL 5 vs PCL6 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

assets

Technical User
Oct 23, 2002
574
AU
I found through a lot of web searching the following information so I have put it together in this tip.

PCL(1) through PCL4 (OLDER PCL), Will not be listed as it was for HP Laser printer seriesII and older. When a new version of PCL was developed it included commands not found in the previous versions, as well as the previous PCL commands. BUT with PCL 6 it has new architecture that is designed to be able to be modified for future HP printers. A major compatibility issues have caused a lot of users to choose PCL 5 drivers instead of the PCL6.

PCL 5 was introduced for the HP Laser III family of printer’s, PCL 5 had/has the best publishing functionality for the office environment. It development was to enable a larger compatibility for font scaling. It is mainly used for desktop publishing, and presentation applications. Today it is still the most widely used version of PCL.

PCL 5E & PCL5C was released for the HP series5 lasers and colour printers respectively. A major change was bidirectional communication between the printer and the computer. The font selection was also greater, as programs were developed for MS Windows. The C Enhancement added colour support for HP printers.

PCL 6 Has major changes, there are backward compatibility problems, as PCL6 is extremely different from previous PCL versions. A major difference is the way it sends commands to the printer. It was developed by HP to increase performance and reliability (Yeah Right).



Never give up never give in.

There are no short cuts to anything worth doing :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top