Canon BJ-200ex - Manual (Page 32)

clean the print head, start a printer self test, and turn on
automatic line feeds.
See Chapter 5, Using the Operator Panel, for details.
DIP Switches
The printer's DIP switches allow you to set the default
printer configuration settings, such as paper and envelope
size, text lines per page, character sets, and so on. See
Chapter 8, Customizing the Printer, for details.
Line Printers Versus Page Printers
Line Printers
Your Canon BJ-200ex Bubble Jet printer is an example of a
line printer. Line printers, sometimes called band printers,
process and print information one line (band) at a time. The
information sent from the computer to the printer indicates
exactly how each line should look and where each dot is
positioned. This information is similar to a bitmapped
graphic that specifies positions of individual dots of ink.
Page Printers
Page printers process and print information one page at a
time. The information sent from the computer to the printer
is sometimes in simple ASCII code, or more often, in a
page description language. This information is a set of
instructions that the printer must interpret to determine
where the printer should position each dot. Some common
page description languages include PostScript, CaPSL, and
HP PCL.
Line Printers and Processing
With line printers almost all of the processing burden falls
on the computer. The printer needs to do very little
additional processing of the information it receives from
the computer-it simply executes the instructions it receives.
This means a line printer needs very little processing power
and memory.
Because most of the processing takes place on the
computer, the speed of the computer's processor (386, 486,
Pentium) and the amount of random access memory(RAM)
on your computer have a significant influence on printing
speed.