<printer id="printer/Generic-GDI_Printer">
  <make>Generic</make>
  <model>GDI Printer</model>
  <mechanism>
    <color />
  </mechanism>
  <lang>
    <proprietary />
  </lang>
  <functionality>F</functionality>
  <comments>
    <en>

    There are many so-called &quot;GDI&quot; printers, especially
    designed for Microsoft Windows. To save expenses for printer
    electronics the manufacturers move over all the rendering to the
    Windows driver running on the PC. The printer gets a simple bitmap
    of the page. It does not know anything about how text characters
    look like or how dithering or color adjustment works. Therefore
    these printers are also called &quot;host-based&quot;
    printers.&lt;p&gt;

    &quot;GDI&quot; means &quot;Graphical Device Interface&quot; and
    is a software API created by Microsoft through which applications
    communicate with the drivers of graphical output devices, as
    printers or graphics cards. &quot;GDI&quot; is not a hardware
    protocol, the hardware protocols of GDI printers can be completely
    different, even between models of the same manufacturer. For
    Windows users this is no problem, as every printer comes with a
    driver CD containing a driver exactly for the particular
    printer.&lt;p&gt;

    For users of operating systems not supported by the printer's
    manufacturer, as GNU/Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, ..., these printers
    are a big problem. The manufacturers usually keep the protocols as
    their trade secrets and so it is not easy to write drivers to use
    these printers under additional operating systems. See especially
    Rildo Pragana's &lt;a
    href=&quot;http://www.pragana.net/gdiprinters.html&quot;&gt;article
    about the development of a driver for the Samsung
    ML-85G&lt;/a&gt;. You should also read this article when you want
    to write a driver (we need especially drivers for the Canon LBP
    winprinters and the Epson EPL-....L series).&lt;p&gt;

    If you have a GDI laser printer and this database does not point
    you to any drivers for it, try especially the &quot;foo2zjs&quot;
    driver for Zenographics' ZJ-stream format which probably also
    works with some Minolta, QMS, and other printers or also
    Samsung's &quot;gdi&quot; driver which is known to work on
    several Samsung and one Lexmark laser printer. Brothers GDI models
    most probably work with the &quot;hl7x0&quot; driver which is
    already part of Ghostscript for a longer time.&lt;p&gt;

    Compaq inkjets are usually relabled Lexmarks, so try the drivers
    for Lexmark models with the same maximum resolution, also the
    drivers issued by Lexmark could work. There are also Xerox
    printers which are relabled Lexmark inkjets, but other Xerox
    models are identical to Sharp's inkjets and understand PCL 3
    (so they work with the &quot;pcl3&quot; driver and are not GDI
    printers).&lt;p&gt;

    All what is written here is not proven knowledge and so do not buy
    a GDI printer because we have written here that it
    &quot;probably&quot; or &quot;perhaps&quot; works. This entry you
    should more understand as a guide for people already having a
    winprinter and searching for a driver.&lt;p&gt;&lt;p&gt;

      Consumables/Refills: &lt;p&gt;

    </en>
  </comments>
</printer>
