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Chapter 2 Setting Up the Printer 27
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