Compart - The DocBridge Products Now Support PCL6

[Böblingen, October 24, 2008] – Originally created to support line printers then upgraded to support the early LaserJet printers, Hewlett-Packard has completely overhauled their PCL (Printer Command Language) print file format. PCL6 is not an extension of PCL5 but an entirely new object-oriented page description language. In addition, PCL6 is now a binary output, with the result a markedly smaller than file size with exactly the same content. Because PCL6 is an entirely new output language, Compart developed a new input and output filter for this PCL version.

Since PCL was originally based on commands developed for dot matrix printers, escape (ESC) sequences are used to describe the print commands. And these commands are handled by the printer in the sequence in which they are received, processed and interpreted. With the introduction of graphical user interfaces and the enhanced printer functionality with the LaserJet printers, modern methods increasingly were required. So in 1995 HP came out with PCL6, an object-oriented language with which much more complex pages could be displayed. In particular PCL6 enabled substantially higher picture quality and device independence.

Another change is in usage. PCL6 is not just supported for HP printers, but also other printer manufacturers. In particular, Océ and Xerox can utilize PCL6 for high performance and transactional printing applications.

Compart will still support the standard input and output of the PCL 4/5 filter, which has been expanded to support the page description language for HPGL plotters. So when considering legacy or new PCL, Compart can help.