Unlike the Windows NT print processor, the Windows 95 print processor has direct access to the spool file. This may be used in a print processor to look ahead in the spool file and optimize the playback of the spool file.
As shown in Typical Printing Process Scenario Using a Raw Spool File, during playback of a spooled raw file the print processor reads the spooled file a block at a time. Although the default print processor does not do this, a print processor can accumulate the entire spool file before passing it on to the port monitor for printing. (Depending upon the size of the spool file, the accumulation could take place either in a memory buffer or in a temporary file created by the print processor). Once the print processor has the entire spool file, it can randomly access any part of the spool file for information that would help in optimizing the printing of the information.