Chapter 2 Setting Up the Printer 31FUNCTION SettingsThe printer’s FUNCTION settings allow you to set the default printerconfiguration settings, such as horizontal print position, text lines per page,character sets, and so on. See Chapter 9, Customizing the Printer, for details.Line Printers Versus Page PrintersLine PrintersYour Canon BJC-70 Color Bubble Jet Printer is an example of a lineprinter. Line printers, sometimes called band printers, process and printinformation one line (band) at a time. The information sent from thecomputer to the printer indicates exactly how each line should look andwhere each dot is positioned. This information is similar to a bitmappedgraphic that specifies positions of individual dots of ink.Page PrintersPage printers process and print information one page at a time. Theinformation sent from the computer to the printer is sometimes in simpleASCII code, or more often, in a page description language. Thisinformation is a set of instructions that the printer must interpret todetermine where it should position each dot. Some common pagedescription languages include PostScript, CaPSL, and HP PCL.Line Printers and ProcessingWith line printers almost all of the processing burden falls on thecomputer. The printer needs to do very little additional processing of theinformation it receives from the computer—it simply executes theinstructions it receives. This means a line printer needs very littleprocessing power and memory.Because most of the processing takes place on the computer, the speed ofthe computer’s processor (386, 486, Pentium) and the amount of randomaccess memory (RAM) on your computer have a significant influence onprinting speed.The faster the processor, and the more RAM you have, the faster you canprint on your BJC-70 Color Bubble Jet Printer.Setting Up thePrinter
