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Windows 98 Professional Reference

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- 13 -
Printing


Printing is still an important function is most desktop environments, and Windows 98 provides an array of useful and convenient printing features.

Windows 98 Printing Subsystem

Windows 98's printing subsystem is similar to Windows 95's, as you can see from Figure 13.1. When a Win16 or Win32 application prints a document, the graphics device interface (GDI) creates an enhanced metafile (EMF), which contains data and instructions for the printer. The EMF is then passed to the print spooler, a 32-bit subsystem component that interprets the EMF data and translates it into a format that is discernible to the print driver. The spooler also temporarily stores the print data, if necessary, while the print document waits for an available printer. In Windows 98, the printer driver system consists of a universal driver, which performs driver functions common to all print drivers, and one of several minidrivers. A mini-driver provides functions specific to a particular printer. Several minidrivers can be present on the system at once, each offering access to a different type of printer, as shown in Figure 13.1.

Figure 13.1

The Windows 98 printing process.

Depending on your system's configuration, Windows 98 can return control to the application while the EMF spools, or it can send the EMF to the spooler and then return control. (You'll learn more about configuring spool properties later in this chapter.)

Data bound for postscript printers spools as postscript RAW printer data (refer to Figure 13.1). The RAW data format is an alternative to the EMF format. According to Microsoft, RAW print data takes longer to spool in Windows 98. Also, because RAW print data cannot spool in the background, control will not return to the application until all data has been spooled.

MS-DOS applications in Windows 98 print directly to the spooler from a virtual printer port in the virtual DOS machine, as shown in Figure 13.2. You can choose to disable spooling for MS-DOS print jobs, as described later in this chapter.

Figure 13.2

Printing from MS-DOS.

Local versus Network Printers

Windows 98 classifies printers into two types: local printers and network printers. When the print job leaves the spooler (refer to Figure 13.1), it passes to the print router. The print router routes the print job to either the local print provider (for processing and printing from the local machine) or to the network. A local printer is a printer that is physically connected to the Windows 98 computer and that is served by the local print provider within the Windows 98 printing subsystem, as shown in Figure 13.3. A network computer is physically attached to a different computer, as shown in Figure 13.4. Print jobs sent to a network printer pass from the print router to a network print provider and over the network to the print server machine (refer to Figure 13.1). A network printer is most often local to another Windows computer. As a matter of daily operations, the difference between a local and a network printer is largely hidden. Local and network printers coexist in the Printers folder, and the user can choose either a local or a network printer from a drop-down list in a Windows application.

Figure 13.3

A local printer is attached to the local machine.


Figure 13.4

A network printer is attached to a different computer and accessed through the network.


NOTE: The steps for installing a local printer and a network printer are, of course, different. To install a local printer you must create a new printer definition. To install a network printer you must locate an existing printer on the network. Windows 98's Add Printer Wizard takes care of most of the details--you just have to be prepared to choose whether the new printer will be a local printer or a network printer.

You'll learn more later in this chapter in the section on "Installing a Local Printer" and "Setting Up a Network Printer."

Using the Printers Folder

The Printers folder is the center for Windows 98 printer configuration. To access the Printers folder, click on the Start button, select Settings and then choose Printers. The Printers folder is shown in Figure 13.5.

You can use the Printers folder for tasks such as the following:

Figure 13.5

The Printers folder provides a central place from which to manage all your local and network printers.

The printers presently installed on the system appear as icons in the Printers folders. To pause or resume printing, set the default printer, take the printer offline, purge print documents, share the printer, or view the printer properties, right-click on a printer icon and choose the appropriate options from the context menu, shown in Figure 13.6.

Figure 13.6

Right-click on a printer icon in the Printers folder to access the printer's context menu.

Default Printer

The default printer, as the name implies, is the printer selected by default when you print from an application. The default printer is also the printer used when you click on the printer icon in a Windows application toolbar. In the Printers folder, the icon for the default printer has a check mark beside it, as shown in Figure 13.5.

The first printer you install automatically becomes the default printer, and it remains the default printer until you change the default setting. To change the default printer, right-click on a printer in the Printers folder and select Set as default from the context menu.

Configuring Printers

To view or modify a printer's configuration settings, right-click on the printer in the Printer's folder and select Properties. The Printer Properties dialog box is shown in Figure 13.7.

Figure 13.7

The Properties dialog box for a printer contains several tabs, each containing various options that you can set for the printer.

Because the Properties dialog box is directly related to the functions exposed through the printer's driver, the features and options vary somewhat from one printer to another. Figure 13.7 shows a typical Printer Properties dialog box. Your printer may not have some of these options, it may have additional options, or some of the options may appear in different places. Descriptions of the tabs in Figure 13.7 follow:

Figure 13.8

The Printer Properties Details tab for a typical printer.

Separator Page

A separator page is a page inserted after each printed document that helps keep one print job separate from the next. You can choose to use either a full page containing graphics supplied by Windows 98, a simple page that contains only text, or any custom page you select. The custom page can be any Windows metafile (a file with the .wmf extension).

Spool Settings

The Spool Settings button on the Details tab lets you define how the spooler will spool and print documents. In the Spool Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 13.9, you can configure the spooler to expect EMF or RAW printer data format for this printer. You can also determine whether to print directly to the printer or to use the print spooler. The Spool print jobs option almost always returns control to the application sooner than the Print directly to the printer option. If you elect to use the spooler, you have two options:

Figure 13.9

The Spool Settings dialog box.

You can also enable or disable bidirectional support if your printer is attached to an Enhanced Capabilities Port (ECP) and has a cable that supports ECP. (See this chapter's "Installing a Local Printer" section for more information about ECP.)

Printing from MS-DOS Applications

As described earlier in this chapter, by default, MS-DOS applications print to the spooler through a virtual printer port. Microsoft designed Windows 98's spooling feature to support the widest possible range of DOS applications. Because printing in DOS applications is implemented by the application itself, however, and because DOS applications sometimes implement printing in nonstandard ways, some DOS applications may not function properly in this default configuration. Windows 98 provides the following alternatives for MS-DOS printing support:

To disable spooling for MS-DOS print jobs, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on a printer icon in the Printers folder and choose Properties.
2. In the Printer Properties dialog box, select the Details tab.
3. Click on the Port Settings button.
4. In the Configure LPT port dialog box, clear the check box labeled Spool MS-DOS print jobs.

The preceding procedure will disable spooling for MS-DOS print jobs only. Other print jobs will continue to spool. To disable spooling on all print jobs, click on the Spool Settings button in the Printer Properties Details tab, and select Print directly to the printer (as described earlier in this chapter).

To map a local printer port to a network printer, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on a printer icon in the Printers folder and choose Properties.
2. In the Printer Properties dialog box, select the Details tab.
3. Click on the Capture Printer Port button.
4. In the Capture Printer Port dialog box, select a device name (LPT1, LPT2) and enter a path to the network printer. Click on OK. You can also choose whether you want to reconnect to the printer at logon.

Installing a Local Printer

Before you attempt to set up a local printer on your computer, you need to make sure that you can connect to that printer from your computer. Here are some of the things you need to check:

Assuming that your printer is Plug and Play-compliant, installing your printer is as easy as turning on your attached printer and booting into Windows 98. Plug and Play can install your printer either during the Windows 98 installation process or at any time thereafter when you want to add a printer. When Windows 98 loads it should automatically detect that the printer has been added to your computer. It will then display a dialog box that informs you of this fact. After Windows 98 has identified the printer, it will attempt to install the correct driver for that printer. At this point it may prompt you to insert the Windows 98 CD-ROM. After you have done that it will look for that driver on that disk. If the driver did not come with Windows 98, or if you have an updated driver that you want to install instead, simply insert the driver disk from your hardware manufacturer into a disk drive and direct Windows 98 to that drive.

For this process to work properly, you have to make sure that the printer you want to add complies with the Plug and Play standard.

If Windows 98 does not automatically recognize your printer you can still add the printer manually, using the Add Printer Wizard.

To access the Add Printer Wizard, open the Printers folder and double-click on the Add Printer icon. After the Add Printer Wizard window appears, click on the Next button to begin using the wizard.

Select the radio button for Local printer and click the Next button. You will be asked to choose the manufacturer and printer model for your printer, as shown in Figure 13.10. Scroll down to the name (or abbreviation) for your printer's manufacturer in the left window of this page of the wizard. When you select that name by clicking on it a list of all available printers from that manufacturer will appear in the window on the right. Select your printer's model by clicking on its name in this window.

Figure 13.10

In the Add Printer Wizard, select the manufacturer and model for the printer you want to add.

TIP: When the Add Printer Wizard prompts you to choose a printer manufacturer and model, you can quickly skip to the list of your hardware manufacturer's printers by pressing the first letter of the manufacturer's name.

Unless your computer is a very recent model, it is very likely that Windows 98 already has a driver for your printer. Windows 98 includes drivers for more than 1,000 different printers. If your printer is not among those listed, however, you will have to click on the Have Disk button and insert a disk containing your printer's drivers into either the floppy disk drive or the CD-ROM drive. These drivers should have been supplied to you on disk when you bought your computer. After you indicate the drive on which Windows 98 should look, it will read the disk you have inserted and will list any available printer drivers found on that disk. that the driver might be in a subdirectory on the disk, so you should check the documentation that came with your printer if you are unable to locate the driver. In the event that you are still unable to locate the driver, you will need to contact the printer's manufacturer to obtain a Windows 98 driver for your printer (a Windows 95 driver should also work).

NOTE: If your printer's drivers did not come with Windows 98 and you cannot find your disk, you can always download the files from the manufacturer's web site.

After you have selected the correct manufacturer and printer model, click on the Next button. You will then be asked to choose the port on which you want to install the printer, as shown in Figure 13.11. This is the hardware port on your computer, to which you have attached the printer. In most cases the correct port is LPT1, although you may need to check with your computer's manufacturer or the documentation that came with your computer, to determine which port you should select.

Figure 13.11

The Add Printer Wizard asks you to select the port to which your printer is attached.

As part of the process of selecting a port, you can also configure the port, having Windows 98 always check the status of the port before it prints. If you want to change these settings, click on the Configure Port button found on this page of the Add Printer Wizard.

If your system contains an Enhanced Capability Port (ECP), you should install the printer to that port unless it is already being used by another device. ECP supports a higher bandwidth and allows bidirectional information to be passed between the computer and the printer.

After selecting a port for your printer you will be asked to choose a name for the printer. In most cases the default, which is usually the brand and model number, should suffice, but if you have multiple printers you may prefer to think of a name that reminds you of the printer's location. If you already have another printer installed on your computer, you will be asked whether you want the new printer to be the default Windows printer.

You will then come to the last page of the Add Printer Wizard, where you will be asked whether you want to print a test page. Microsoft recommends that you print a test page when you install a printer. This is a good opportunity to make sure everything is working correctly. Simply choose the Yes radio button, which is selected by default, and a test page will be printed as soon as your printer has been installed.

When you click on the Finish button, Windows 98 will install and configure the printer for your computer. Unless the drivers for this printer have previously been added to your computer, a dialog box will appear asking you to insert the Windows 98 CD-ROM. After you put the CD-ROM into the drive and click the OK button, the printer driver and any other necessary files will be copied to your computer. Then an icon for your printer will appear in the Printers folder. If this is the only printer installed on your computer it will automatically be selected as the default printer.

Setting Up a Network Printer

Setting up a network printer in Windows 98 can be as easy as connecting to a local printer. Windows 98's Point and Print feature will usually allow you to automatically install the correct network printer driver without requiring the Windows 98 CD-ROM or another disk containing the printer driver. Through Point and Print, when you use the Add Printer Wizard to add a network printer, Windows 98 will often be able to download the printer driver from the computer or server to which the printer is attached.

Before attempting to set up a network printer on your computer, you need to know how to connect to the printer. Here is some of the information you need to know:

Open the Printers folder and double-click on the Add Printer icon. The Add Printer Wizard appears. Select the radio button for Network Printer and click the Next button.

You are asked to supply the location of the printer on the network. If you already know the share name of the printer and the computer name of the computer to which it is attached, you can simply type the path in the box labeled Network _path or queue name, as shown in Figure 13.12. You need to supply the universal naming convention (UNC) path for the location of the printer, such as \\computername\printername, where computername is the name of the computer to which the printer is attached and printername is the share name of the printer.

If you are not sure of the exact name of the computer and printer on the network, click on the Browse button.

NOTE: You can choose to install a single printer each time you run the Add Printer Wizard. If you want to install more than one printer on your computer you have to add them one at a time.

Before you move on to the next window in the Add Printer Wizard, check the correct radio button indicating whether you want to print from MS-DOS-based programs. If you select Yes and click on the Next button, the next window of the wizard will request that you capture a printer port for these MS-DOS programs. As described earlier in this chapter, MS-DOS programs often need to believe that they are printing to a local port. If you capture a port, when MS-DOS programs attempt to print to this port, Windows 98 will redirect the print job to the network printer automatically.

Figure 13.12

Enter the UNC path for the share name of the printer you want to install as a network printer.

NOTE: If the printer isn't configured for Point and Print, you may be asked to provide a manufacturer and model, as you would with a local printer.

As with local printers, the Add Printer Wizard will ask whether you want to print a test page. Select the Yes radio button if you want to see whether your connection to the network printer is working properly. After you have decided whether to print a test page, press the Finish button to install the printer on your computer.

After you have selected the network printer that you want to install and have finished with the Add Printer Wizard, Windows 98 will connect to that printer to determine its exact type. Having determined the make and model of the printer, Windows 98 will then see whether you already have a correct version of that printer's driver available on your computer. If you do, the printer should install correctly and you will be finished adding this printer to your Printers folder. In most cases, however, Windows 98 will either download the correct driver to your computer or you will be prompted to insert a disk containing the driver into one of your disk drives.

TIP: Although you can use the Add Printer Wizard to add a network printer to your computer, an easier way is to open Network Neighborhood and browse for the printer (you will probably first have to double-click on the icon for the computer to which the printer is attached). After you have found the printer, right-click on the printer's icon and choose Install. This will open the Add Printer Wizard but skip several windows, thus making it easier and quicker to add a network printer.

Point and Print

After you have finished with the Add Printer Wizard, Windows 98 will attempt to install the printer driver from the computer to which the printer is attached. In many cases, if the shared printer is set up correctly on the computer to which it is attached, Windows 98 will be able to download the printer driver from that computer and install it on your computer. This feature is known as Point and Print.

Assuming that this process works correctly on your computer, you should see a dialog box telling you that Windows 98 has found the proper driver on the remote computer and is installing the driver on your computer. After this process is finished, you can connect to and use that printer.

For the Point and Print feature to work properly, the computer to which the shared printer is attached must be running Windows 98, Windows NT Server, or Novell Netware. This feature does not always work properly, however, and you may still have to install the printer driver from either the Windows 98 CD-ROM or the printer driver disk supplied by your printer manufacturer.

If you are unable to install the driver for your printer through Point and Print, Windows 98 will attempt to install the driver from disk. If the driver was supplied on the Windows 98 CD-ROM, you will be prompted to insert that disk into your disk drive. If the driver is only available on a floppy disk or a different CD-ROM, however, you will need to direct Windows 98 to the location of that driver by browsing to its location on the disk.

Printing from Applications

In Windows 98, when you print from a Windows application, you can change a number of the printer's configurations within the application itself for the print job you are processing. These changes apply only to the application in which you are working; when you later open another application, the normal default settings will appear.

In most Windows applications you can print the document that you are working on by clicking a toolbar button or by selecting Print from the File pull-down menu. After you tell the application to print the document, you will likely be presented with a window in which you can change any settings for that print job. that although you don't always see this window when you choose a Print button on a toolbar, you should always see a Print window if you use the pull-down menu.

Figure 13.13 shows the Print dialog box as it appears in the WordPad application that comes with Windows 98. This window shows the relevant information on the selected printer, such as the printer's name and its current status. To change from the default printer to a different printer, simply choose the other printer from the drop-down box.

Figure 13.13

The WordPad printer dialog box.

If you click the Properties button a separate window appears that contains many of the same properties settings that are available for this printer in the Printers folder.

that the Print dialog box includes an option to print to a file rather than to the selected printer. If you choose this option, the printer output will be saved in a data file.

Managing Print Jobs

To view the status of a printer, you can open the printer window for that device. If you are in the process of printing a document from your computer, you can click on the printer icon in the system tray to bring up the window for that printer. You can also open that printer's window by double-clicking on its icon in the Printers folder.

When you open a printer window, all the currently pending documents for that printer are displayed. The pending print jobs are shown in order in the print queue, with the job at the top of the queue showing the document currently being printed. Any documents below that will be printed in descending order.

Other information presented in this queue window includes:

By right-clicking on any of your pending print jobs, you can choose to either pause or cancel that job. When you pause a print job, it will be skipped over when its place in the queue comes up. You can exercise control over your own documents, depending on the security configuration, but you may not be able to pause or cancel other people's print jobs unless you have administrative privileges on that printer.

In addition to pausing or canceling print jobs, you can elect to purge all pending documents by selecting that option from the Printer pull-down menu, subject to the security restrictions discussed earlier regarding other user's documents. You can also change any of the properties for the selected printer by choosing Properties from the Printer pull-down menu.

Special Printing Considerations

Most of the main printing features found in Windows 98 have already been discussed, but a number of other areas are worth considering. This section looks at the following topics:

Drag-and-Drop Printing

If you drag and drop a document icon onto a printer icon, Windows 98 will print the document. One strategy is to create a desktop shortcut for one or more of your installed printers. You can then drag documents from any window and drop them onto the printer shortcut.

To create a desktop shortcut for one of your printers, open the Printers folder. With either your left or right mouse button, select the printer's icon from the folder and drag it to the desktop. When you release the mouse button, a shortcut for the printer will be created.

NOTE: If you prefer not to create a desktop shortcut for the printer, you can drag and drop documents directly to the printer's icon in the Printers folder.

When you drag a document onto a printer icon, Windows 98 opens the related application, prints the document within the program, and then closes that application. Because Windows 98 looks for a program that has previously been associated with that type of file in order for it to open an application and print the document, you need to have previously installed a pro-gram on your computer that is registered for handling that file type. Thus, if you want to print a document created in Microsoft Excel, you need to have Excel loaded on your computer.

Printing Files from Disk

In addition to printing files by dragging and dropping them onto printer icons, you can print them directly from disk. In most cases this is the quickest way to print a document without having to open the application.

To print a file directly from disk, select the file from within Windows Explorer. The file can be located on any floppy, hard, or network drive to which you have access. Right-click on the file and choose Print. Windows 98 will open the application associated with the file type extension, print the file in that application, and close the application automatically.

Printing Frames in Internet Explorer

The print window that appears when you are printing from an application will normally appear consistent from program to program, but one difference occurs when you print a document that contains multiple frames within Internet Explorer. When a web page contains multiple frames, although it appears to be a single page, it is actually made up of multiple pages which appear within a single frame set. All of these frames are separate documents that can be printed out through your computer.

When you print a page containing multiple frames, the print window will include additional options not found when you print from other applications. You can elect to print the selected frame (usually the main, or largest, frame), to print all of the frames individually, or to print the frame set as it appears on your screen. You can also select the option to print all linked documents, in which case Internet Explorer will print all pages for which hyperlinks appear on the page you are printing. Alternatively, you can print a table containing links for these documents.

For further information on printing within Internet Explorer see Chapter 27, "Internet Browsers in Windows 98."

Printing in Color

One possible problem when you print color graphics is that the color displayed on your monitor might not match the color generated by the printer. To help alleviate this problem, Microsoft has included support for Image Color Matching (ICM) in Windows 98. Windows 95 supported ICM 1.0; Windows 98 supports the newer ICM 2.0, which includes a number of technical improvements. The end result is a better correlation between the colors as they appear on your monitor and those that are generated by your color printer. Since ICM is supported on multiple platforms, the images you create in Windows 98 applications should appear virtually the same on computers that are running other ICM 2.0-compliant operating systems.

Offline Printing

As its name implies, offline printing enables you to generate print jobs when your computer is not connected to a printer, and to have them printed at a later time. Offline printing is useful for a laptop computer that may spend much of the time disconnected from the printer. Similarly, in a network environment, users may want to print to a printer that is temporarily offline for servicing.

NOTE: Offline printing only works for network printers, and requires the use of the print spooler.

To use offline printing, open the Printers folder and select the network printer you want to use offline. Right-click on the printer's icon and choose Use Printer Offline. Any print jobs you generate will be held in the queue until you instruct Windows 98 to actually print these jobs. When you want to print the stored jobs, right-click on the printer's icon and deselect the Use Printer Offline option.

If your laptop is configured to be used with a docking station, when you boot your computer, Windows 98 will automatically select offline printing if it detects that you are not connected to the docking station. If you later boot your laptop while it is attached to the network, the offline printing feature will be turned off and any stored print jobs will be sent to your printer.

Removing Printers

To remove a printer and its related drivers from your computer, open the Printers folder. Right-click on the printer's icon and choose Delete. Windows 98 will ask you to confirm that you want to remove that printer from your computer. Click on the Yes button, and the printer will then be removed from your computer.

During the process of removing the printer, a dialog box will appear asking whether you also want to remove the files used by that printer. The files to which Windows 98 is referring are the printer's driver and any other related files needed by that particular printer. If you think you might use that printer in the future, you can choose No to keep these files on your computer. By doing so you will not need to install the files from the Windows 98 CD-ROM the next time you add the printer to your computer. Otherwise, choose Yes to remove all the files associated with this printer from your computer.

Working with Fonts

When you install a printer on your computer several fonts specifically supported by that printer may also be installed. Additionally, Windows 98 supplies a number of fonts. You can also add fonts to your Windows 98 configuration. Soft fonts are fonts installed directly into Windows 98. You install and manage soft fonts through the Fonts folder in Control Panel.

The Printer Properties dialog box for your printer may include a Fonts tab, which lets you install and manage printer-resident or cartridge fonts for the printer.

NOTE: A printing administration utility such as HP JetAdmin also lets you install and manage printer-resident fonts.

Windows 98 supports the four types of fonts named here:

Name of Font Type Font File Extension
TrueType .TTF
OpenType .OTF
Vector .FON
Raster .FON

To install a soft font, follow these steps:

1. Double-click the Fonts icon in the Control Panel.
2. In the Fonts folder, select Install New Font from the File pull-down menu.
3. In the Add Fonts dialog box, shown in Figure 13.14, navigate to the location of the fonts file for the font you want to install. Click on the Network button to map a network drive to the font file.

You can also use the Fonts folder to see what any installed font will look like in your applications and printed documents. If you double-click a font icon, a separate viewer window appears; it contains information about the font as well as a display of how characters (such as letters) will appear. You can also elect to print an example of this font from within this viewer window.

To delete a soft font from your system, right-click on the font icon in the Fonts folder and choose Delete. A dialog box will ask whether you want to delete this font from your system. If you select Yes, the font and any related files will be deleted.

Figure 13.14

The Add Fonts dialog box.

Troubleshooting Printer Problems

Windows 98 includes a Print Troubleshooter, a wizard-like guide designed to help you solve common print errors. If you experience a printing problem in Windows 98 and are not able to fix it on your own, try the Print Troubleshooter before seeking technical support.

To start the Print Troubleshooter, click on the Start button and select Help. When the Help window opens, double-click on the Troubleshooting book icon and then on the Windows 98 Troubleshooters icon. A list of Troubleshooters will appear. Click on Print in this list to open the Windows 98 Print Troubleshooter.

To use the Troubleshooter, select the radio button for the type of problem closest to the one you are experiencing. Then press the Next button and proceed through the steps, which are designed to help solve your problem. Although the Print Troubleshooter will help you isolate some of the most common problems, there are many types of problems the Printer Troubleshooter won't catch.

Some of these printer problems and their resolutions follow.

Your Printer Does Not Print

You Receive a Message about an Error for Insufficient Memory or Disk Space

Your Print Spooler Might Not Be Functioning Properly, Causing an Error When You Try to Print

Conclusion

This chapter described how to install, configure, and manage local and network printers. The chapter discussed the Windows 98 printer subsystem and described how to use the Printers folder and the Add Printer Wizard. The chapter also discussed some special Windows 98 printing features, such as point and print, drag and drop, offline printing, and HTML frame set printing.

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