Printer glossary

Cartridge
- Removable recepticle for ink or toner.
CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow)
- With the addition of black, the three basic colours from which all other colours or hues are derived in printing.
Desktop publishing
- Professional quality printed reports, newsletters and other publications, with a mixture of text and graphics created on a Personal Computer.
DPI
- Refer to Dots per inch
Dots per inch (DPI)
- Referred to as the printers resolution, is the concentration of dots within one inch. In 1998 Lasers typically have 600dpi.
Font
- A typeface style. May be internal to a printer, or downloadable from the PC. Common ones are Arial or Times Roman.
GDI
- Refer Graphics device interface
Graphics device interface (GDI)
- A GDI Printer will talk directly to Windows without requiring a special printer language.
Greyscale
- A range of shades between black and white.
Handshake
- Communication between the PC and printer
Output
- For a printer the finished page. Commonly referred to as hardcopy (sometimes treeware!)
PCL
- Refer to Printer command language
Printer command language (PCL)
- A command set developed by Hewlett-Packard for describing how a laser printer is to draw a page.
Postscript
- Page description language developed by Adobe System and has been a standard in commercial publishing.
Page per minute (PPM)
- The speed of a printer
PPM
- Refer to Page per minute.
Scalable
- Refers to font sizes. Typically 10 or 12.