Printer Driver Benefits

Monotype Imaging’s printer drivers support XPS, PCL®5, PCL6, PostScript®-compatible and raster-based printers for the Windows® 95/98/ME, Windows NT4, Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Windows Vista™ platforms.

Monotype Imaging PDK (Printer Driver Kit)
PDKs are available for graphics-based devices (XPS, PCL 5/6, PostScript) and image-based devices (GDI or XPS to raster). Each PDK provides all the driver code and tools necessary for creating custom printer drivers for monochrome and color devices. The PDK includes a full-featured core driver and a fully tested Windows driver GUI source code. A unique design approach to device customization allows new devices to be supported without programming. The PDK allows for the support of a customized graphical user interface tailored to a particular device or family of devices.

High Performance
Monotype Imaging PDKs are tested and optimized to deliver superior performance. Resulting drivers deliver speed advantages in return to application time, time to first page and total job time.

Customer Support
Driver development is tedious and includes many legacy issues. This is one reason why many customers prefer to outsource this task. Monotype Imaging provides expert customer support, whether a customer chooses:

to use an existing driver GUI

an off-the-shelf Monotype Imaging GUI

to create a custom GUI using Monotype Imaging’s tools

Customers benefit from:

quick problem resolution

positive response to requests for custom features

exhaustive product testing

focused customer training

support for industry standard test suites and certifications such as WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certification

Monotype Imaging’s drivers are customizable. Printer OEMs can either add their own intellectual property or Monotype Imaging will customize drivers to unique specifications. Source code licenses are also available.

Exact Font Metrics
Monotype Imaging’s drivers provide tight control over the storage and usage of font metric data. The benefit is that the drivers solve common display (or WYSIWYG) problems that result from different host and printer font metrics.

Font Packs
Manufacturers can license Monotype Imaging font sets to improve print performance and reliability. Printers that include the Monotype Imaging font sets are able to offer faster print speeds and avoid font substitution problems, such as inconsistent line and page breaks and differences in font design and character spacing – issues that occur when transferring documents to and from the workplace. Learn more here.

Patented Color Technologies
Monotype Imaging’s ColorSet™ technology is available for all printer drivers and includes halftone screens, device profiles, color management and color optimization tools. Manufacturers are able to integrate patented color technology that enables high-quality color reproduction. Each ColorTune tool kit offers a variety of features while supporting a number of industry standards. Printer manufacturers are able to minimize development time and are more readily able to get products in the hands of consumers ahead of competitors.

Faster Time-to-Market
Manufacturers benefit by working with one vendor to implement drivers, fonts and color from an integrated, fully-tested technology suite.

Reduced Development Cycle
Monotype Imaging’s driver PDKs are designed to simplify driver development. One common set of driver functions, GUI and driver device customization methods are provided.

Driver Architecture Overview
Printer drivers are structured as two separate components – one for generating printed output (core driver) and the other to allow users to select printer-specific features. Manufacturers benefit in a variety of ways:

a common GUI across all platforms, which reduces costs and time-to-market

a common code in core drivers, allowing new features to be more easily supported on all platforms

worldwide language support, including languages based on double-byte character sets

Driver GUI
PDKs include a print driver GUI, which can be customized to support standard features and options on target printers. The GUI includes an API, which allows printer manufacturers to produce a custom-coded GUI. The design and implementation of the print drivers allow a common GUI appearance across all of the supported platforms regardless of whether the driver is PDL or raster based.

Contact us to evaluate a driver or for more information about how Monotype Imaging’s print drivers can be integrated into your solution.