Protech Post Drivers For Mac

If you print PostScript graphics - such as Encapsulated PostScript files created in drawing programs and page-layout applications - to a non-PostScript office printer, you'll see either a gray box that displays the name of the file or the low-resolution preview image incorporated in the graphic. By comparison, PostScript printers include built-in firmware that interprets text and graphics sent to them from applications and files that use native PostScript code. A PostScript Printer Description file helps the driver software understand and address the specific capabilities and options of the Mac-based hardware your business uses in its client workflow. The Basics When you use a PostScript printer on your Mac, you install a driver file that works with many printers that support the PostScript language, and combine it with a PPD that describes the capabilities and options your hardware offers.

Protech Post Drivers Usa

PPDs also contain localized instructions designed to support the natural language you use - for example, English, French, German or Italian - throughout your operating system. Some PPDs ship with your operating system, whereas others appear on the installation discs that accompany new output hardware. File Type If you open a PPD file in a text processor such as Text Edit, you'll see a combination of native-language information and PostScript code. PPDs use a specialized version of the PostScript language to define and describe a combination of machine features and print-time behaviors. For example, if you read through a PPD, you'll find a description of how the manufacturer expects the device to behave after you clear a paper jam, specifically describing whether it should reprint the affected pages.

You may find parts of the file more difficult to read than others, but much of it will make sense if you're familiar with the options you see and can set when you print. Device Types PostScript applies the term 'printer' to a wide range of output devices, some of which don't emit pieces of paper. You'll find PPD files for recorders that translate application files onto slide film, for imagesetters that output page layouts and graphics at high resolution onto material that's used to create printing plates and for more-conventional sheet-fed output devices. Because PostScript drivers include the ability to print output instructions to an on-disk file, you can use PPDs to prepare projects for output on hardware you don't own.