Print jobs can be generated in a variety of printer languages. See "Printer Languages" for a discussion of the various types. Different applications with printing capability will generate print jobs using different languages. Similarly, certain printers support some languages but not others. For example, many PCL printers do not support PostScript printing. (See "2. Determining the Printer Languages Your Printer Supports" for more information.)

To be sure you are sending your print job to a printer that can support the language used by your application, you must determine the language used by your print job. Sending a print job to a printer that does not support the printer language used in that print job will produce unexpected results varying from no printer output to incorrect printer output.

In MS Windows and DOS applications, the print driver you are using in a specific application can provide information about the type of job the application creates when the document is printed. The name of the print driver can be seen in many applications by choosing the Select Printer option from the file menu.

• Print drivers that generate PostScript print jobs usually have either the word “PostScript” or the letters “PS” in their names.
• Print drivers that generate PCL print jobs occasionally have the letters “PCL” in their names but usually make no reference to a the printer language they are using..

If your application does not allow you to select a print driver, it generates an ASCII text print job. In DOS, copying or redirecting a text file to an LPT port “prints” an ASCII text job. For example, TYPE filename LPT1 or DIR > LPT1.

A large family of printer languages, the “page description languages” (PDLs), including PostScript, do not support printing this type of job. However, ASCII text files can be printed by non-PDL languages such as PCL.

The language of a print job can also be determined by examining the print job's data. However, an understanding of the characteristics of printer languages is necessary in order to determine the language type. See "5. Checking the Contents of Your Job for Incorrect Control Sequences" for information on examining print job data.