Windows 98 supports a truly impressive array of printers from numerous manufacturers. Windows 98 makes getting the most out of your printer easier than did Windows 3.x. One quite welcome feature, for example, is the ease with which you can configure a remote network printer for use on your computer. You don't even need a driver for the printer; Windows 98 copies the driver from the remote computer to which the printer is connected. Windows 98 also offers expanded drag-and-drop printing, improved queue management, and many other new printing features.
This chapter explains how to set up, configure, use, and manage local and remote printers. The topics covered include the following:
This chapter aims to help you begin printing as soon as possible. The first few sections explain how to set up and configure a printer and print from Windows applications. Later sections explain some more complex printer issues, such as setting up and using print server hardware and software.
When you run Setup to install Windows 98, Setup migrates all your existing printers to the Windows 98 environment, copying to your system any new Windows 98 drivers necessary to support your installed printers. Therefore, you might not have to do anything more to begin printing under Windows 98 than configure the printers' settings. If you do have to install a new printer driver, however, the process is simple. This section explains how to install a local printer (one connected to your PC). The section "Setting Up a Network Printer" later in this chapter explains how to set up printers for use across the network.
The Printers folder, located in My Computer, gives you access to all your installed printers. The Printers folder also contains a wizard that helps you install a local or remote printer. Open the Printers folder in My Computer and select the Add Printer icon. The Add Printer wizard starts and displays an informational message about the Add Printer wizard. Click on Next to continue.
Add Printer then prompts you to choose how the printer is connected to your computer. Choose the Local printer option to install a driver for a printer connected to your PC, or choose Remote printer to install a remote network printer. Choose the Local printer option; then click on Next.
The Add Printer wizard provides a list of printers, separated by manufacturer, that Windows 98 supports (see Figure 8.1). From the Manufacturers list, choose the manufacturer of the printer you want to install. Then, from the Printers list, choose the model of printer connected to your PC. If you can't find the exact model in the list, check your printer manual to see whether your printer is compatible with one of the printers shown in the list. If so, choose it.
FIGURE 8.1 Select the printer's manufacturer and model.
NOTE: You should try to use a driver included with Windows 98 unless none of them will work for your printer. If your printer includes a disk that contains printer drivers for Windows 95 or 98, choose the Have Disk button and the Add Printer wizard will step you through adding a driver from the disk. If you don't have a driver disk and can't find your printer model or manufacturer listed, determine whether your printer is compatible with one of the printers supported by Windows 98. Then select the compatible printer from the Manufacturers and Printers lists.
After you choose a printer model and click on Next, Add Printer prompts you to select the port to which the printer is connected (see Figure 8.2). The following section helps delineate your port choices.
FIGURE 8.2 Select the port to which the printer is connected.
The ports listed in the Add Printer Wizard dialog box include your PC's local serial communications (COM) ports and local physical parallel (LPT) ports. The name of any driver already associated with a COM port appears beside the COM port in the list. If you've configured a modem to use COM2, for example, the modem's name appears beside COM2 in the list. If no device is associated with the port, the title Communications Port appears beside the port name.
Most printers use an LPT port (explained next), but some output devices include support for both COM and LPT ports. Many of the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers, for example, include both a COM and an LPT port, which enables you to connect the printer to both port types. Some output devices don't support LPT ports. Many plotters, for example, include a COM port and a Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HPIB) port but not an LPT port.
If you need to connect your output device to a COM port, you should verify that no other devices use that COM port. Sometimes, however, you can connect your printer to the same COM port assigned to another device, but that capability depends on the type of device. If the other device is another printer or a modem, for example, you should be able to associate and use your new printer with the same COM port without any problems. However, this assumes that you use an external serial port switch to connect all the devices to the COM port. Otherwise you have to disconnect one device from the port and connect the other whenever you want to use it.
If you decide to use a COM port for your output device, you need to configure the settings for the port. To do so, select the port you plan to use; then choose the Configure Port button. Add Printer then displays a property sheet for the port, as shown in Figure 8.3.
FIGURE 8.3 Specify settings for the COM port on its property sheet.
The following list explains the settings on the COM port property sheet:
Generally, the default settings do work, but you might want to increase the bps rate to speed up printing.
If your printer is connected to one of your PC's LPT ports, select an appropriate LPT port from the list. Note that the dialog box lists only the LPT ports present in your system. Windows 98 can, however, address virtual LPT ports from LPT1 through LPT9. These virtual ports do not physically exist in your PC, but Windows 98 can treat them as local ports for associating remote network printers with logical LPT ports on your PC. Using virtual LPT ports is explained in the section "Setting Up a Network Printer" later in this chapter.
When you set up a local printer to use an LPT port, you must specify the physical port to which the printer is connected. Nothing can prevent you from specifying the same LPT port for more than one printer. For example, you might have two or three printers connected to an LPT switch box that in turn is connected to your LPT1 port. When you need to use a particular printer, you select it in Windows 98, change the printer switch to the appropriate printer, and print.
LPT ports have only two port settings to configure in the Add Printer dialog box. Choose an LPT port; then choose Configure Port. Add Printer calls up the dialog box shown in Figure 8.4.
FIGURE 8.4 The Configure LPT Port dialog box.
The Spool MS-DOS print jobs check box enables you to determine whether print jobs that originate from DOS applications are spooled through the same 32-bit print spooler that the Windows 98 applications use. This option is enabled by default because spooling DOS print jobs through the Windows 98 spooler results in better background printing for the application and eliminates device conflicts between DOS applications and Windows 98 applications that might otherwise attempt to access the port at the same time. Therefore, you should leave this option enabled unless you experience unlikely problems printing from the DOS application and determine that the problem lies in the DOS application's inability to use the Windows 98 spooler.
The Check port state before printing check box, when checked, causes Windows 98 to check the state of the LPT port prior to printing to the port. When this check box is cleared, Windows 98 prints to the port without first checking its status.
FILE: Port
The port selection list in the Add Printer Wizard includes a port named FILE:. This entry does not reference a physical port but rather, enables you to direct a print job to a file. The resulting file contains not only the document data but also printer control commands. You then can use the COPY command from a command prompt to send the file to the printer. Or you might be using a third-party print spooler that requires you to place the print jobs in a spool directory. Associating a printer driver with the FILE: port enables you to do that.
TIP: If you want to print data to an ASCII text file, install and use the Generic/Text Only printer.
When you print to a printer associated with the FILE: port, Windows 98 issues a Print To File dialog box. This dialog box is similar to a typical Save As dialog box and includes controls you can use to select the disk, folder, and filename by which to save the file. After you enter a filename and choose OK, the file prints to the file rather than to a printer.
You probably can see port entries in the Add Printer dialog box other than just the COM, LPT, and FILE: port entries. You use the FAX: and PUB: ports, for example, to configure a printer driver for Microsoft Fax.
In addition to the Microsoft Fax ports, you might see other ports listed in the Add Printer dialog box. If you have installed WinFAX, for example, a port entry named FaxModem probably appears in the dialog box. An entry for ECP appears in the dialog box if your system contains an ECP. The section "Using the Extended Capabilities Port" later in this chapter discusses the ECP.
After you specify the port to which your printer is connected, Add Printer prompts you for a name for the printer. This name appears under the printer's icon in the Printers folder. The dialog box also includes a prompt that asks whether you want to use this new printer as the default Windows printer. If you choose Yes, the printer becomes the default Windows printer. Unless you choose a different printer in the Windows application, the application prints to the default printer. If you click on the Printer button in the Word for Windows toolbar, for example, output automatically goes to the default printer.
Next, Add Printer asks you whether you want to print a test page. You always can benefit from printing a test page to verify that the printer is connected and configured properly. Choose Yes to print a test page or No to skip printing the test page; then click on Finish to complete the printer setup process. Add Printer then copies the necessary drivers from the Windows 98 CD or distribution disks and adds an icon to the Printers folder for the new printer.
Windows 98 makes the process of installing a network printer almost automatic. And unlike Windows 3.x, Windows 98 does not require that you have a driver for the network printer. Windows 98 simply copies the driver and any other required files across the network from the computer that shares the remote printer. This makes quickly installing and beginning to use a network printer possible--even if you don't have the driver on your computer or the Windows 98 distribution disks (or CD-ROM).
Automatic setup of network printers is called Point and Print in Windows 98. Windows 98's Point and Print attempts to determine the type of printer you want to install and copies the necessary driver and support files from a computer sharing the printer, from another location on the network, or from a local source (Windows 98 CD or disks). The files required for a particular printer are defined in the Windows 98 Inf files.
If Windows 98 can't determine from the server which printer you are installing, or if the print server doesn't support Point and Print, you can use the Add Printer wizard to install printer support for the remote printer. If the print server supports unified naming convention (UNC) names, you don't have to associate the remote printer with any of the PC's local printer ports. If the print server doesn't support UNC names, however, you can easily associate one of the local PC's printer ports with the network printer. This local port can be a virtual port, which means it does not have to physically exist in the PC. If you have only one printer port in the PC--LPT1--you still can associate LPT2 through LPT9 with the remote printer.
Windows 98, Windows NT, and Novell NetWare servers all support Point and Print. You can automatically set up across the network printers shared by servers running any of these three operating systems.
Windows 98 provides more than one method for setting up network printers, all of which are designed to simplify the process so that a user can install support for a network printer as easily as possible without assistance from a network administrator. One of the easiest ways to install support for a network printer is simply to print to the printer; Windows 98 automatically detects the absence of the required printer driver and installs the necessary files.
You can install support for a network printer in a variety of ways. The following list explains two of the most common ways:
You also can use the Add Printer wizard to set up a network printer. Open the Printers folder and start the Add Printer wizard. When Windows 98 prompts you to choose between a local and remote network printer, choose the Network p_rinter option and click on Next. Windows 98 then prompts you for the pathname of the shared printer. In the Network p_ath or queuename text box, enter the path to the shared printer. The path consists of the name of the computer sharing the printer and the name by which the printer is shared. To specify a printer shared as hpnetprint on a computer named aardvaark, for example, enter \\aardvaark\hpnetprint. If you don't know the name of the printer, choose the Browse button. Windows 98 provides a Browse for Printer dialog box you can use to browse the network for the printer (see Figure 8.5).
FIGURE 8.5 The Browse for Printer dialog box.
The Browse for Printer dialog box resembles the Network Neighborhood, showing all the computers in your workgroup in an expandable tree. To view the printers connected to a particular computer, click on the plus sign beside the computer's name. To locate a printer connected to a computer outside your workgroup, expand the Entire Network branch and locate the computer and printer you want to use. After you find the printer, select it and choose OK. The Add Printer wizard returns to the Add Printer dialog box. The rest of the printer setup process is similar to setting up a local printer. Work through the Add Printer wizard to complete the printer setup process. After you finish, Windows 98 adds an icon in the Printers folder for the network printer. You then can print to the network printer as if it were connected locally to your PC.
Later sections of this chapter explain network-related issues for printing to NetWare servers.
After you configure a printer, be it local or remote, you probably need to set a few options for the printer to control the way it prints. The following section examines the most common types of settings you can specify for various printers.
Most printers enable you to control a wide range of options that define how the printer functions, including the amount of memory installed in it, the paper source it uses, the port to which it is connected, how it handles graphics and fonts, and much more. These options vary from printer to printer, but many are common to all printers. You use the Printers folder to set these options globally for a printer. You can override most of the settings when you print a document, however, by specifying options in the application's Print dialog box.
To set a printer's options, open the Printers folder, select the printer, and open its Context menu (right-click on the printer and choose Properties, or press Shift+F10). Windows 98 then displays a set of property pages for the printer. Figure 8.6 shows the property pages for a typical printer--the HP LaserJet IIIP.
FIGURE 8.6 The General property page for a typical printer.
The General, Details, and Sharing property pages apply to most printers (a Sharing page appears only if your computer is connected to a network). The following sections explain these and other property pages individually. Because covering all the printers Windows 98 supports is impossible, the following sections use common printers to explain various settings. For specific help with settings for your printer, click on the question mark button on the property sheet; then click on the setting control about which you need information. Windows 98 displays a small text box that contains a description of the control's function. You can also consult your printer manual for more information.
The General property page, shown in Figure 8.6, contains only a few controls. The Comment text box enables you to enter a comment for the printer. You can enter any information you like in the Comment text box, but one typical use is to provide information about the printer for other users who access the printer across the network. For example, you might enter the office location.
The Separator page combo box enables you to print a job separator page between each print job. Separator pages help you organize your own print jobs if you print many different documents to the printer. Separator pages also help separate print jobs that other users on the network print to your printer. You can choose from three standard options: None, Full, and Simple. If you select None, no separator page prints between print jobs. The Full option creates a graphical separator page that contains the document name, user name, and print date and time. The Simple option creates a text-only printout of the same information that prints when you use the Full option.
TIP: You can assign a separator page only on a printer connected to your PC. You can't assign a separator page on a remote network printer. For more information on sharing printers and other resources, refer to Chapter 26, "Peer Resource Sharing and Security."
Besides the None, Full, and Simple separator page options, you can use any Windows metafile (WMF) file as a separator page. This enables you to use a custom image for the separator page that might include your company logo or other information. Choose the Browse button to search for a WMF file, or enter the path to the file in the text box area of the Separator page combo box.
NOTE: Although you can use a custom WMF file as a separator page, Windows 98 does not include any other information on the page; for example, your custom separator page does not include user, document, or time-printed information. If you specify a separator page on a shared network printer, consider using the Full option or the Simple option to be sure to include user information on the separator page, enabling you to route the completed print jobs to their intended recipients.
The Details property page (see Figure 8.7) contains settings that enable you to control port, driver, and spooler settings. The Print to the following p_ort drop-down list box enables you to select the port you want to associate with the printer driver. If you want to switch the printer from LPT1 to LPT2, for example, select LPT2 from the drop-down list. You can also select a network printer path from the drop-down list to associate the printer driver with a printer located elsewhere on the network.
FIGURE 8.7 The Details property page for a typical printer.
The Add Port and Delete Port buttons enable you to make additional local and remote ports available to your printers and to remove existing ports. Typically, Windows 98 automatically recognizes new physical ports. If you install a new input/output (I/O) adapter that contains a second LPT port, for example, Windows 98 recognizes the new port as soon as you turn on and boot the system. However, you might want to add a new network printer to your list of available ports. To do so, choose Add Port, which displays the Add Port dialog box (see Figure 8.8).
FIGURE 8.8 The Add Port dialog box.
To add a network printer, choose the Network option button. In the accompanying text box, enter the path to the network printer resource. The path must include the remote computer's name and the name of its shared printer. To specify a shared printer named netprint on a computer named horatio, enter \\horatio\netprint in the text box. Or choose the Browse button to search the network for a printer.
To add a different type of port, choose the Other option button; then select a port from the accompanying list. To add a local printer port, for example, select Local Port from the list and choose OK. Windows 98 then prompts you for the name of the port you want to add. Specify the port name; then choose OK.
To delete a port, choose the Delete port button from the Details property page. Windows 98 displays a list of the available ports. Select the port you want to delete and choose OK.
You also can set various properties for a selected COM or LPT port. To set port properties, choose the Port Settings button.
The Spool DOS Print Job check box in the Configure LPT Port dialog box enables you to control whether print jobs generated by DOS applications are spooled or sent directly to the printer. If you want superior printing performance, you should configure the port to enable spooling of print jobs from DOS applications. If the DOS application cannot print correctly through the spooler for some reason, turn off this option.
The COMx Properties dialog box (see Figure 8.12) enables you to specify settings for a COM port. These settings are typical for a COM port, regardless of the type of device connected to it. Chapter 19 covers these settings in detail.
If the network client you use doesn't support UNC names, you must associate a local LPT port with the remote printer. Associating a local printer port with a remote network printer is called capturing the port. If you print from DOS applications, you also might need to capture local ports for remote network printers. The DOS applications then can print to the remote printers as if they were connected to local LPT ports.
You can capture any LPT port--physical or virtual. If your PC contains only one LPT port, for example, that port probably is configured as LPT1. However, you can capture ports LPT2 through LPT9, associating them with remote network printers. The printer isn't connected locally to the PC, so it doesn't matter that the port the network printer captures isn't present on the computer. The port simply serves as a logical object Windows 98 can use to control the printer internally. And you can assign the same LPT port to more than one printer, just as you can when you use local printer ports. As long as you don't try to print to two printers that share a printer port at the same time, duplicating ports shouldn't cause any problems.
TIP: If your PC contains physical LPT ports, don't capture those ports for network printers; just use the first available virtual LPT port.
To capture a port for a remote network printer, first use one of the methods described earlier in this chapter to install the printer. Then call up the printer's Details property page and choose the Capture Printer Port button. Windows 98 displays the Capture Printer Port dialog box, as shown in Figure 8.9.
FIGURE 8.9 The Capture Printer Port dialog box.
From the Device drop-down list, select the port ID that you want to associate with the remote network printer. Then use the Path combo box to specify the path to the network printer. You can manually enter a path in the text box portion of the combo box or use the drop-down list to select a previously used path.
By default, Windows 98 does not automatically capture the port and assign it to the remote network printer each time you log on. If you want the port to be associated with the remote printer each time you log on to Windows 98, thereby making the printer available automatically, enable the Reconnect at logon check box.
TIP: You can capture multiple printer ports for a remote printer, although doing so is seldom necessary. For example, you can capture LPT2 and LPT3 for the same printer. Applications that print to either port have their output redirected to the same remote printer. In addition, capturing a port for a remote printer does not affect the existing UNC connection. An application still can print to the printer using its UNC name rather than the captured port. A Windows application, for example, would print using the UNC name, whereas a DOS application would print through the captured port.
You sometimes have to disconnect a remote network printer from a local LPT port or release the port. To release a port, display the printer's Details property page and choose the End Capture button. Windows 98 displays the End Capture dialog box. From the Printer list, select the printer port you want to release and choose OK.
The Details property page also enables you to change the driver associated with a printer so that you can change driver types without changing other information such as port settings, and it enables you to provide support for a different printer type without running through the entire process of installing a new printer.
You can use a currently installed driver or install a new driver. To associate an existing driver with the printer, simply select the appropriate driver from the Print using the following driver drop-down list. To add a new driver, choose the New driver button. Adding a new driver from here on out is the same as when you use the Add Printer wizard to install a driver.
If you select a local printer port for the printer, you enable the two controls in the Timeout settings group: Not selected and Transmission retry. The Not selected setting specifies the amount of time Windows 98 waits for the printer to acknowledge that it's online before Windows 98 generates an error message. The default setting is 15 seconds. Increase this setting if the printer typically is not yet available after 15 seconds (if you wait until after you issue the print job before turning on the printer, for example).
The Transmission retry setting specifies the amount of time Windows 98 waits for the printer to come back online and accept more data after the printer's buffer fills, an error occurs, or another situation occurs. The default is 45 seconds. You might want to increase this setting for PostScript printers, which typically take longer to return online because of additional printer setup and font downloading that occur during a print job. You also might want to increase this setting if you print large print jobs to non-PostScript printers.
NOTE: Only the Transmission retry setting applies to printers connected to COM ports. The Not selected setting does not apply to printers connected to COM ports.
You can specify a number of settings that control the way data spools to the print queue, which enables you to balance system response against print speed. To specify spool settings, choose the Spool Settings button from the Details property page to display the Spool Settings dialog box (see Figure 8.10).
FIGURE 8.10 The Spool Settings dialog box.
Spooling enables Windows 98 to provide better application response during printing. With a typical spooler, a print job is created as a series of temporary files on disk. The operating system--here, Windows 98--then takes over sending these temporary files to the printer, working as a background task. By separating the sending of the data to the printer from the source application, the application becomes available to you much more quickly and enables you to continue using the application after you issue a print job. The application completes the print job very quickly.
Spooling typically provides the best overall performance because you can continue to use your computer while print jobs are completed. If you need to print a 200-page document, for example, you don't have to wait until each of those 200 pages prints before you can resume using your computer. In a select few situations, however, turning off spooling is beneficial. For example, you might have to turn off spooling if your disk is nearly full and doesn't have sufficient space to accommodate the temporary print files.
Four settings in the Spool Settings dialog box enable you to control whether print jobs go directly to the printer or spool to disk and, if they spool, when spooling actually begins. The four settings are explained in the follow- ing list:
One major change in Windows 98 printing is the format in which data is sent from the spooler to the printer. In Windows 3.x, the printer driver sends raw printer data to the printer. In Windows 98, you can use enhanced metafile format (EMF), rather than raw format, to send the data to non-PostScript printers.
Metafiles contain graphical data and are a common file format for Windows drawing applications. Unlike bitmaps, which define an image as a series of dots, metafiles define an image as a collection of graphical objects, such as lines and circles. The advantage metafiles offer over bitmapped images is that you can scale and resize metafiles without affecting the image quality. Although some restrictions do apply to resizing, scaling, clipping, and other actions on standard metafiles, transformed metafiles come out as much better images than do transformed bitmapped images.
EMF adds new features to the metafile format to make it much more useful and remove the restrictions for scaling and sizing that previously hindered the use of standard Windows 3.x metafiles. Although EMF was developed primarily to overcome the limitations in standard metafiles for developers of drawing applications, EMF enhances printing in Windows 98.
Before you can truly understand EMF, you need to understand the function the graphics device interface (GDI) performs in Windows 98. The GDI is a core Windows 98 component that handles most graphical I/O in Windows 98--from painting the screen to sending output to printers. The GDI supports a variety of drawing commands for rendering graphical objects and text. EMF files use those same drawing commands. In fact, a metafile really amounts to little more than a file that contains the GDI commands, palette, and other information needed to render the image defined by the GDI commands.
When you print from a Windows application, the printer driver filters the data through the GDI. The GDI renders the data in the background and sends it to the print spooler.
The EMF format enables the GDI to process and send the data to the spooler more quickly because the EMF format is native to the GDI. Instead of converting the data from the application to raw printer format, the GDI simply generates the GDI drawing commands necessary to render the print job on the printer. This decrease in rendering time returns control of the application to you more quickly.
NOTE: If you print to a printer attached to a Windows 98 server, the EMF rendering occurs on the server rather than on the client computer that generated the print job. This reduces the client computer's workload, further increasing the benefit of using EMF. If you print to a server running Windows NT or Novell NetWare, EMF rendering occurs locally on the client computer and the rendered data is then sent to the server. When you print to a local printer, all rendering naturally occurs on the local computer.
The Spool data format drop-down list on the Spool Settings dialog box enables you to specify the data format that Windows 98 uses to send data to the print spooler. You can choose RAW to direct Windows 98 to send the information to the printer in raw format or EMF to direct Windows 98 to send the data to the spooler in enhanced metafile format.
Many newer computers include bidirectional printer ports that enable information to flow not only from the computer to the output device (such as a printer) but also from the printer to the computer. Bidirectional ports provide three main benefits, described in the following list:
If your PC contains a bidirectional parallel port, you can choose the Enable bidirectional support for this printer option button to enable bidirectional support for the printer. Or you can choose the Disable bidirectional support for this printer option button to disable bidirectional support.
NOTE: Even if your LPT ports support bidirectional transfer, they might not be configured as such. Run your system's basic input/output system (BIOS) setup program and check the port settings to determine whether the ports are configured for bidirectional use. You don't need to make any changes in Windows 98 other than to enable bidirectional support for the printer, as specified previously in this section.
The Sharing page of a printer's property sheet, which appears only if File and Print Sharing is turned on, enables you to share the printer with other users on the network. To share a printer, first configure all its other settings and print a test page to verify that it is working properly. Then, display the Sharing page of the printer's property sheets. Choose the Shared As option button to enable sharing; then enter a name for the printer in the Share Name text box. This name appears to other users when they browse the network for resources. You also can add an optional comment in the Comment text box. The comment appears as additional information in the Network Neighborhood folder if the user configures the folder for a detailed view.
TIP: To protect the printer with a password to restrict its use, enter a password in the Password text box. Any user who tries to access the printer must answer a prompt to enter the password.
Chapter 26 offers a detailed explanation of sharing resources and using shared resources.
You also can set properties for a printer other than those described in the previous sections. These options vary from printer to printer, but many types of settings are common among most printers. The property sheets for a printer, therefore, often include pages that enable you to control options for graphics, fonts, device settings (such as memory installed in the printer), and other settings. The most common property pages are described in the following list:
TIP: Jobs typically print faster if you set the printer to download TrueType fonts to the printer (use soft fonts) rather than print the fonts as graphics. If you use many different fonts scattered throughout the document, however, printing the TrueType fonts as soft fonts can increase printing time because of the excessive font downloading that has to occur. In such a situation, printing the TrueType fonts as graphics can actually decrease printing time.
PostScript printers include options that other types of printers don't require. These PostScript-only settings are scattered throughout the PostScript printer's property sheet, although PostScript printers also include a PostScript property page (see Figure 8.11).
FIGURE 8.11 The PostScript property page.
The following list explains some of the most common settings that apply to PostScript printers:
Printing from a Windows application is relatively simple. Each Windows application that supports printing includes a Print command in its File menu. When you choose Print, a Print dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 8.12 appears. Figure 8.12 shows a typical application-derived Print dialog box, which in this example is from Word for Windows. The controls in the Print dialog box vary from one application to another but are very similar.
FIGURE 8.12 The Word for Windows Print dialog box.
One printer in Windows 98 is always the default printer. Windows 98 uses the default printer to print a document unless you specify a different prin-ter. If you click on the printer button in an application's toolbar, for example, the application typically sends the current document to the default printer without prompting you for any additional information. To specify a different printer, choose File | Print; then select the printer from the Name drop-down list. Some of the options in the Print dialog box will change to reflect the change in printers.
NOTE: Some applications change the default printer when you select a different printer. Most applications, however, simply print to the selected printer without changing the default printer. If you print from an application that changes the default printer each time you select a different printer, you can easily restore the original default printer. After you issue the print job, choose File | Print again, select the printer you want to assign as the default printer, and then cancel the print job. You also can set the default printer from the Printers folder. Select the printer you want to assign as the default printer, display its Context menu, and then choose Set As Default.
You can set options globally for a printer by using its properties in the Printers folder. You also can set properties for the printer according to the document. After you choose File | Print (activating the Print dialog box), choose the Properties button to display a set of property pages for the printer (see Figure 8.13). These property pages make up a subset of all the printer's property pages, showing the properties you can set on a per-document basis.
FIGURE 8.13 Property pages for setting printer properties for a document.
If you need to change a property not made available in these property pages, cancel the print job and open the Printers folder and set the printer's properties as necessary.
NOTE: If you experience printing problems and have access to the World Wide Web, visit the Microsoft Online Printer Troubleshooting page at http://www.microsoft.com/. This page leads you through a series of questions and then gives you tips on ways to correct the printing error.
In addition to printing a document from an application as described in the previous section, Windows 98 provides the capability to print documents directly from the desktop. This capability simplifies printing a document. You can use one of four primary methods to print documents from the desktop. All these methods are similar and are described in the following sections.
Using the document's Context menu is one of the easiest ways to print a document. You can open the folder that contains the document, right-click on the document's icon to display its Context menu, and choose Print. Windows 98 opens the document's parent application, prints the document to the default printer, and closes the document. If the parent application is open before you initiate the print job, Windows 98 does not close the application, but it does close the document. If the application is not open before you issue the print job, Windows 98 closes the application after the job spools.
NOTE: If the document resides on the desktop, you print in the same way. Select the document and display its Context menu; then choose Print.
TIP: If you select a document type not associated with an object linking and embedding (OLE) compliant application, the Print command will not appear in the document's Context menu. You will have to open the document and print it manually.
Another method for printing from the desktop is to drag a document onto a printer. Open the folder that contains the document and drag the document from the folder to a printer in the Printers folder or to a printer shortcut on the desktop or in a folder. Windows 98 opens the parent application, prints the document to the default printer, and closes the document.
You also can drag a document into a printer queue window to print the document. For example, open the Printers folder, double-click a printer icon to open its queue window, and drag a document from the desktop or a folder into the queue window. The document prints on the selected printer.
TIP: You can't drag and drop an object onto a button on the Taskbar. If you drag the object over the button and hold it there for a second, however, the application the button represents opens on the desktop and you can drag the object into it. Therefore, you can open a printer's queue window and minimize it and place the queue on the Taskbar. Then drag a document onto the queue's button and hold it over the button for a second. When the queue window opens on the desktop, drag the document into the queue window and release the document to print it. You can use this same method to open a document. Rather than drag the document onto a printer queue, drag it onto an application.
The third method of printing from the desktop relies on the Send To menu. One of the menu items in a Context menu is Send To. Choosing Send To displays a list of the objects in the \Windows\SendTo folder or, if Windows is configured to support multiple desktops, the \Windows\Profiles\user\SendTo folder. To use the Send To menu to enable printing, simply place shortcuts to printers in the \Windows\SendTo or \Windows\Profiles\user\SendTo folder. Next, select a document and open its Context menu. Then choose Send To, followed by the shortcut for the printer to which you want to send the document. Windows 98 opens the parent application, prints the document to the selected printer, and closes the document.
In addition to using a document's object menu, drag-and-drop, or Send To to print a document, you can start a print job from a folder window. Simply select the document and choose File | Print. Windows 98 opens the document's parent application, prints the document, and closes the document.
Windows 98 adds new features for printing--one of those being deferred printing. Deferred printing enables you to issue a print job even when the printer you want to use is offline. You can print to a network printer from your notebook computer, for example, even when your PC is not connected to the network. After you bring your PC back into the office, you can connect to the network, and the queue begins to send the print jobs to the printer. Essentially, deferred printing means that the queue is placed offline until the printer becomes available.
For the most part, Windows 98 handles deferred printing automatically. After you boot Windows 98, the operating system determines the available printers. The icons of any printers not available across the network are dimmed in the Printers folder, indicating offline printers. If you print to an unavailable printer, the print job spools to the queue, where the job remains until the printer and queue are back online.
You also can manually place a queue offline, enabling you to use deferred printing even if the printer is available. You also have to place a queue offline if the printer becomes unavailable after you boot Windows 98. To place a queue offline, open the Printers folder and select the printer whose queue you want to place offline. Open the printer's Context menu; then choose Work Offline. Any jobs you send to the printer's queue are held in the queue until you place the queue back online. To place the queue back online, open the printer's Context menu and clear the Work Offline option.
During your PC's boot, Windows 98 detects the offline queues and prompts you to specify whether you want to begin printing the jobs in the queue. You can choose Yes to place the queue back online and begin printing the jobs, No to leave the queue offline, or Cancel to cancel the print jobs. Therefore, when you bring your notebook into the office, connect it to the network, and boot the system, Windows 98 should automatically place the queue back online and begin printing the jobs in the queue.
TIP: Deferred printing is not limited to Windows 98 applications. Any Windows application--16-bit or 32-bit--can use deferred printing because the same spooler handles all printing. DOS applications also can use deferred printing if the printer is configured to spool DOS print jobs (explained earlier in this chapter in the section "Setting Up a Local Printer").
If you open the Context menu for a local printer, you might notice the absence of a Work Offline command in the menu. Nevertheless, you can defer printing on local printers. You might wonder, however, why you would want to do so. Well, assume you have a docking station in your office for your notebook computer and that you have a printer connected to the docking station. When you remove your notebook from the office, you don't have your local printer anymore. You still can print to the local printer's queue while the printer is unavailable and then place the queue back online when you dock the notebook.
To defer printing on a local printer, open the printer's Context menu and choose Pause Printing. Print to the printer as if it were available. You can shut down the PC with the jobs pending in the queue, and when you boot the PC again, those jobs are still held in the queue. As it does with network printers, Windows 98 detects the pending jobs in the local printer's queue at startup and asks you if you want to begin printing the pending jobs. Verify that the printer is connected and turned on; then choose Yes to begin printing. Choose No to leave the queue in its offline state and retain the jobs in the queue. Choose Cancel to clear the queue of all pending print jobs.
Many newer PCs include an enhanced parallel port called an extended capabilities port (ECP). The ECP supports bidirectional communication and increased throughput. These capabilities not only enable faster printing but also make it practical to use some of the new devices, such as CD-ROM drives and sound adapters that use a parallel port interface.
Generally, enabling the ECP on a PC requires changing BIOS settings. For example, your BIOS might enable you to configure the port as a standard unidirectional LPT port, bidirectional LPT port, or ECP. Before Windows 98 can recognize your ECP, you must first change the BIOS settings for the port to enable it as an ECP. The way in which you perform BIOS setup varies from one PC to another (depending on the BIOS type and manufacturer). Check your system manual to determine how to run your PC's BIOS setup program and enable ECP support for the port.
TIP: On some systems, you enter BIOS setup by pressing F1 after the power-on self test (POST) finishes. On other systems, pressing the Del key after the POST enters the BIOS setup program. And on other machines, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Esc from the DOS prompt enters BIOS setup.
To provide ECP support in Windows 98, first run your BIOS setup program and enable the ECP. As the BIOS setup program runs, note the base address, IRQ, and DMA values for the ECP. You need these settings to configure the ECP in Windows 98.
After you configure the ECP in the system BIOS, start Windows 98 and open the Control Panel. Choose the System icon; then click on the Device Manager tab to display the Device Manager property page (see Figure 8.14). Your Device Manager page will resemble the one shown in Figure 8.14, but you'll see differences owing to the hardware installed on your PC.
FIGURE 8.14 The Device Manager property page.
Expand the tree labeled Ports (COM and LPT) to list the installed ports. Then remove the existing LPT port for which you want to enable the ECP. If you want to enable the ECP for LPT1, for example, remove LPT1. Removing the LPT port is necessary because the LPT port shares the same settings as the ECP (because they are the same physical port).
After you remove the LPT port, restart the PC. Windows 98 will automatically detect the port and install support for it. If you prefer, you can use the Add New Hardware wizard to have Windows 98 recognize and install your computer's ECP port. Open the Control Panel and double-click the Add New Hardware icon. Click Next, then Next again to have Windows 98 search for the new hardware.
The Add New Hardware wizard then displays a dialog box that lists the resource requirements for the ECP. These are the same base address, IRQ, and DMA channel resource settings you need to note during BIOS setup when you configure the PC to use the ECP. You can't use the wizard to specify new settings; instead you can use the Device Manager to change the settings before you reboot the PC. To complete the process so that you can open the Device Manager and change the settings, click on Next and then Finish. Windows 98 displays a message that you must shut down the computer to install the new hardware and asks whether you want to shut down the computer now. Choose No.
To specify the proper settings for the ECP, open the Control Panel and choose the System icon; then click on the Device Manager tab. Expand the Ports (COM and LPT) branch, select the ECP Printer Port item, and choose Properties. Windows 98 displays a set of property pages for the ECP port. Click on the Resources tab to display the Resources property page (see Figure 8.15).
FIGURE 8.15 The Resources page in the ECP Printer Port property sheet.
Windows 98 includes several basic configurations for ECPs, but you can modify any of the four to suit the requirements of your hardware. If your ECP doesn't require a DMA channel but does require an IRQ, for example, start with basic configuration 1, which includes settings for address range and IRQ. Next choose the setting from the Resource type settings list that you need to change to accommodate your ECP; then choose the Change Setting button. Windows 98 displays a dialog box you can use to specify the new setting. Choose the setting that matches your hardware; then choose OK. Repeat the process for the base address range, IRQ, and DMA, as applicable. After you specify the correct settings, choose OK to close the ECP Printer Port property sheets.
After you close the ECP Printer Port property sheets, Windows 98 asks whether you want to shut down the computer. Choose Yes to shut down the computer and restart the PC after it shuts down all the way. After Windows 98 boots, the ECP is enabled and ready for use in Windows 98. Other than associating the ECP with the driver for the printer connected to the port, you don't need to make any additional changes to begin using the ECP. Refer to the section "Setting Up a Local Printer" earlier in this chapter for more information on configuring ports and printer drivers.
In Windows 3.x, DOS applications do not use the Windows spooler and sometimes cause conflicts with Windows applications that attempt to use the printer while the DOS application is printing. In Windows 98, however, DOS applications can spool their print jobs through the Windows 98 spooler, which offers some strong advantages.
First, spooling DOS application print jobs through the Windows 98 spooler results in smoother printing and multitasking performance. You no longer have to wait for the DOS application's job to finish printing before you can begin working in another application. Instead, the job spools from the DOS application to the print queue, just as it does for Windows 98 applications. This restores control of the PC to you more rapidly.
Spooling DOS print jobs through a common spooler also eliminates conflicts between DOS applications and Windows 98 applications that attempt to print at the same time. You can open a DOS application and start a print job, for example, and then switch to a Windows application and start a second print job. Both are spooled to the queue without conflict. Therefore, you no longer have to configure Windows to give control of the printer port to Windows 98 or to DOS; both environments can have equal access to the print spooler.
Spooling DOS application print jobs is enabled by default. If you have a DOS application that can't print properly through the Windows 98 spooler, you can disable DOS spooling. To do so, open the Printers folder and display the Context menu for any printer connected to the port for which you want to disable spooling. Choose Properties to display the printer's property sheet; then click on the Details tab. Choose the Port Settings button to display the Configure LPT Port dialog box, clear the Spool DOS Print Job check box, and choose OK to close the dialog box and OK again to close the printer's property sheet.
NOTE: Even though DOS applications use the Windows 98 spooler, DOS applications do not use Windows 98 printer drivers. You must continue to use the printer drivers supplied with your DOS applications. Also, DOS applications do not take advantage of EMF format spooling. The primary advantages of spooling DOS print jobs to the Windows 98 spooler are the elimination of device conflicts and improved multitasking.
You can capture a port for a remote network printer using the method explained earlier in this chapter in the section "Capturing and Releasing Ports." Capturing a port is necessary if your network client doesn't support UNC pathnames.
You also can capture ports from the DOS command line. To capture a printer port, open a DOS session and enter the command NET USE LPTn: \\ server\printer, where LPTn: is the name of the port you want to capture and \\server\printer is the path to the printer. To capture LPT1: for a printer named Laser on a computer named PrintServer, for example, use the command NET USE LPT1: \\PRINTSERVER\LASER. On NetWare systems, use the command CAPTURE LPTn:.
Previous sections of this chapter deal primarily with installing and configuring printers and various methods for printing from Windows and DOS applications. Your control over the printer and print jobs doesn't end when you start printing in an application. You can view and manage the print queue, giving you control over such things as the order in which jobs print. The following sections explain how to view and manage a printer's queue and explain the differences in control you have over local printers versus network printers.
Viewing a printer's queue is simple; just open the Printers folder and double-click on the printer whose queue you want to view. Or select the printer and press Enter. A window similar to the one shown in Figure 8.16 appears.
FIGURE 8.16 A typical queue window showing jobs pending.
The queue window lists all the pending jobs, as well as the current job (the one currently being sent to the printer). The queue lists various pieces of information about each print job, including the user who initiated the job, the status of the job, its size, and so forth. The jobs are listed in the order in which they are sent to the printer, with the currently printing job at the top of the list.
Occasionally, you might decide to move a print job located low in the queue to higher in the queue to make it print sooner. Assume you have a number of jobs pending. You realize that you need to print a copy of a report for a meeting scheduled in 10 minutes. You can print the report and then open the queue and move the report from the bottom of the queue to the top to make it print after the current job finishes. To change job order in the queue, simply drag the job into its new position and release it.
In addition to changing queue order, you sometimes will want to pause printing and cancel print jobs. Consider the previous example of an urgently needed report: What if the current print job still has 50 pages to print? Even if you move the report near the top of the queue so that it prints next, printing the 50 pages of the current job plus your report document probably will take longer than the 10 minutes you have left before the meeting. Therefore, you need to pause the current print job and cancel it so you can print your report.
To pause a print job, select the job from the queue window; then choose Document | Pause Printing. Windows 98 pauses the print job, but any pages already sent to the printer's buffer still print.
Unfortunately, you can't pause a job that's printing, move another job ahead of it to print, and then resume the paused job. If you pause the current job, the effect is the same as pausing the queue altogether. None of the other jobs can print until you resume or cancel the paused job. You can, however, pause jobs not currently printing. If you pause a few jobs in the middle of the queue, any jobs higher in the queue will print. Then jobs lower in the queue than the paused jobs will print. If you make no other changes to the queue, all the nonpaused pending jobs will print, leaving only the paused jobs in the queue.
Sometimes you need to pause the entire queue rather than just one print job; for example, you might want to pause printing if the printer runs out of toner (or the equivalent for nonlaser printers) or jams before the job finishes. To pause the queue, choose Printer | Pause Printing. Any pages already in the printer's queue still print, but no other pages are sent to the printer. To pause the pages in the buffer, place the printer offline.
To resume printing, first place the printer online. Then choose Printer | Pause Printing to remove the check from the Pause Printing menu item.
If you want to remove all print jobs from the queue, choose Printer | Purge Print Jobs. All pending print jobs are removed from the queue and are not sent to the printer.
You can view and manage the queue of a network printer in much the same way as a local printer. Some restrictions, however, do impede your ability to manage jobs in a network queue.
When you open the printer's queue window, you see all the print jobs pending for the printer, regardless of who originated each one. You can pause and cancel your own print jobs, but you can't pause or cancel other users' print jobs. Unlike in a local queue, you can't change the order of print jobs in the queue whether the jobs you want to change are your own or another user's. To effectively move one or more of your print jobs to a lower position in the queue, simply pause the job(s). As jobs continue to be sent to the printer, those below your paused jobs in the queue "jump over" your jobs and are printed. Also, you can't pause or unpause the printer nor purge the queue.
The person who logs onto the computer to which the printer is attached can manage the queue in all ways. If your printer is shared on the network, for example, you can move print jobs around in the queue, pause jobs, and cancel jobs, even if other users initiate those jobs. You also can pause and resume the printer and purge the queue.
NOTE: Before you cancel other users' print jobs or purge the queue, note the users' names and the descriptions of their print jobs. Then you should send an e-mail message to those users to inform them that you are canceling their print jobs.
Windows 98 includes support for Image Color Matching (ICM), which enables applications to provide consistency between the colors of objects on the display and the color of those objects after they're printed. ICM enables you to see on the display the color output that will be rendered on the printer.
ICM is based on technology that Microsoft has licensed from Eastman Kodak and relies on color format standards defined by InterColor 3.0, a standard developed by a consortium of companies including Eastman Kodak, Microsoft, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and others. InterColor 3.0 provides for standard and consistent definition of color properties of display and output devices across vendors and platforms.
ICM relies on color profiles that define the color properties of monitors, printers, scanners, and other output devices. The manufacturer of the ICM-compliant device provides ICM profiles. Windows 98 places the ICM profiles in the \Windows\System\Color folder when you install support for the device during setup.
To use ICM during printing, you must set the appropriate printer properties. (Naturally, only color printers offer support for ICM.) To control ICM properties for a printer, first open the printer's property sheet. Then choose the Graphics tab to display the Graphics property page. If the printer supports ICM, the Graphics property page will be similar to the one shown in Figure 8.17.
FIGURE 8.17 The Graphics property page of an ICM- compliant printer.
NOTE: The description of ICM options in this section is based on the Kodak ColorEase PostScript printer. Other output devices naturally have different capabilities and corresponding options. Therefore, the options for a particular output device will differ somewhat from those described in this section. The Kodak ColorEase example simply gives you a general understanding of ICM capabilities in Windows 98.
If color matching doesn't affect a job you are about to print, you can turn off color matching. To turn off color matching, choose the No image color matching option button. If you do want to use ICM, choose the Use image color matching option button. Because of the additional overhead and color matching computation, printing will be slower using the color matching option.
If you decide to use ICM, you can specify a few options that control the way ICM matches and renders the colors of the output. After you choose Use image color matching, choose the Choose image color matching method button. Windows 98 displays a dialog box similar to the one shown in Fig- ure 8.18.
FIGURE 8.18 Set ICM options in the Image Color Matching dialog box.
The controls in the Image color matching method group enable you to control where the color matching takes place. The options are explained by descriptions in the dialog box. The following list provides an overview of these three options:
You also can control the rendering process to tailor it to specific end results. The options in the Rendering intent group in the Image Color Matching dialog box control the color output. Each of the three options in the Rendering intent group includes a description that explains the option's purpose. Choose the Saturation option to optimize the output for color saturation, which generally is ideal for presentation graphics. Choose the Contrast option to optimize the output for contrast, which generally is ideal for reproducing photographic images. If color accuracy is most important, choose the Colormetric option.
Windows 98 adds additional control of color matching over Windows 95 by including support for color management profiles. The Color Management property page (see Figure 8.19) provides a means for you to specify predefined color profiles to provide color matching for the printer. The profile you specify in the Color Management property page of the printer's property sheet controls the way colors print on the selected printer. The Color Management page of the Display Properties sheet (see Figure 8.20) controls the way colors appear on the display.
FIGURE 8.19 The Color Management page of the printer's property sheet controls color matching for the printer.
FIGURE 8.20 (No figure available) The Color Management page for the display controls color matching for the display.
Color profiles match onscreen colors with output colors so that what you see on the display is an accurate rendition of what will print. Windows 98 includes color profiles for some printers and monitors, and hardware vendors can develop and include their own color profile files.
To associate a color profile with a printer, right-click on the printer and choose Properties. If the printer supports color management, the printer's property sheet includes a Color Management page as shown in Figure 8.20. On the Color Management, page click the Add button to display the Add Profile Association dialog box (see Figure 8.21).
FIGURE 8.21 Use the Add Profile Association dialog box to choose a color profile for a printer.
To view additional information about a profile, right-click on the profile's filename in the list and choose Properties. Windows 98 displays a property sheet for the profile. Click the Profile Information tab to view the property page shown in Figure 8.22.
FIGURE 8.22 View the description of a profile on the Profile Information page.
When you locate the profile you want to associate with the printer, select it from the file list in the Add Profile Association dialog box; then choose Add. Choose OK on the printer's property sheet to apply the new color profile to the printer.
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