Pscript Capabilities

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Important

The modern print platform is Windows' preferred means of communicating with printers. We recommend that you use Microsoft's IPP inbox class driver, along with Print Support Apps (PSA), to customize the print experience in Windows 10 and 11 for printer device development.

For more information, see Modern print platform and the Print support app design guide.

The PostScript Printer Driver (Pscript) provides the following capabilities:

  • Support for all PostScript printers, using printer-specific PPD-based Pscript minidrivers that describe each printer's characteristics.

  • A Pscript user interface, based on the TreeView control and property sheets, that is consistent for all printers, but is also modifiable for each printer's unique options.

  • A single Pscript renderer that, along with the GDI graphics engine, converts Microsoft Win32 GDI calls from applications into printer commands that can be sent to the print spooler.

  • Support for version 3.1 of the Document Structuring Convention, described in the PostScript Language Reference Manual published by Adobe Systems, Inc.

  • Support for printers that provide PostScript Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3 features.

  • The following types of support for fonts:

    • Incremental downloading of OpenType fonts as PostScript Type 1 or Type 2 fonts.
    • Incremental downloading of TrueType fonts as PostScript Type 1, Type 3, Type 32, Type 42, or CID-based Type 42 fonts.
    • Incremental downloading of host-resident raster fonts as PostScript Type 3 or Type 32 fonts.
    • Full downloading of host-resident PostScript Type 1 fonts.
    • Printer-resident PostScript Type 1, Type 2, and CID fonts.
    • Font substitution per glyph, for glyphs that exist in the printer's character set.

  • Support for ICM 2.0, and allowing image color management to be performed on the host system or by printer hardware.