PS and PCL Driver Distinction: Why can't we all just print along?

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kewlguy239

kewlguy239

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Sep 9, 2012
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I work for a lettershop's IT department and am constantly battling against the preconceived notions of non-technical employees when it comes to using specific drivers for certain fonts/programs.

For some reason, they are told to run documents from Microsoft Word with the PCL driver, and any PDF with the PS driver.

I told them, (and feel free to correct me if I am wrong) that the driver doesn't matter, so long as it supports the font in the document. We had a Word doc printing Frutiger 45 Light on the PCL driver and it was coming out granulated. Switched to PS driver, and it was fine. I was then told by the supervisor of the dept that "No, we don't use PS drivers in Word because it will 'blow out' the document fonts." I have not witnessed such an occurrence, but again, I would think that has to do more with the font in the document than the driver itself.

I am looking for some information and documentation supporting my theory of driver distinction being based on the fonts inside the document, and also any other information reguarding PDF printing as it relates to drivers. Any useful links you could provide would be greatly appreciated, as I have to get any findings in writing, since they don't listen to or believe the stupid IT guy.
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

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Mar 25, 2010
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There are "some" PS fonts that are not in PCL and vice versa, but it's very very rare to find them. You can do a printer test page that lists all the fonts, but even those are not the final list of what you can print, there are many fonts that they will print just fine even if not in the printer memory.

It's easy to test things though, print in both and see what the differences are. They may have setup their best practices for printing because of some issues they have seen before, ask them why. It probably does not cause much issues with anything, I'd just them print however they want.
 
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kewlguy239

kewlguy239

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That's generally what I've been telling them... use both and use whichever looks better. Its just hard to get documented sources to support these practices. I could tell them this but will be asked "Yes, but why?" The why is the important part. Saying "because that's the way it is" doesn't seem to fly, even though that's just how it is, lol.

Thanks for the feedback!
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

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Feb 10, 2006
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Are there any potential disadvantages in using PCL instead of PostScript?
Some graphics may not print as well as a PCL image as they do as a PostScript image.
Some customers may see a difference with a particular file while others cannot and some applications may print better in PCL or vice-versa. Many of these differences can be resolved through driver or application settings.
Some users want to have PostScript type faces available in PCL mode. The way to accomplish this is to purchase a third party program to convert PostScript fonts into a format compatible with PCL. Such programs are available from Adobe (R) (Adobe Type Manager) or Bitstream (Bitstream Facelift) for example.

The above makes it sound like the fonts can be in the driver.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=bpo00141
 
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