Printer Driver Support

The Windows 95 device driver model includes two parts: a universal driver and a mini-driver. This device driver model makes it easier for printer manufacturers to create drivers for their printers. Windows 95 provides the universal printer driver, which communicates with other parts of the operating system and includes information pertinent to all printers. Printer manufacturers provide mini-drivers to communicate with the universal driver and with the printer itself. The following sections describe the universal driver and the PostScript mini-driver provided in Windows 95.

Note

Mini-drivers written for Windows 95 also work with the Windows NT 3.5 universal printer driver.

Universal Printer Driver

The Windows 95 universal printer driver supports mainstream page description languages, including HP PCL®, Epson® ESC P/2, Canon® CaPSL, Lexmark PPDS, monochrome HP GL/2, and most of the older dot matrix technologies. Almost all non-PostScript printer drivers provided with Windows 95 are based on universal driver technology.

The universal printer driver has full support for device-resident Intellifont and TrueType scalable device fonts. It also supports downloading of TrueType outlines to PCL printers with TrueType rasterizers. Enhancements offer support for downloading unbound TrueType outlines and of character sets with more than 256 characters.

The universal printer driver includes the following:

PostScript Mini-Driver

Microsoft worked closely with Adobe Systems to develop a PostScript mini-driver, which offers the following features: