Hermes VANGUARD OPTIMA, Руководство пользователя

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3-1
SECTION 3
The Printer Driver
This section describes how the computer controls the laser system through the printer driver. It
defines some very important terms that you need to know in order to operate the system
correctly so please read it thoroughly.
How the Computer Controls the Laser System
The laser system is a unique type of output device. Let’s call it a very sophisticated
printer/plotter. A regular laser printer is a “raster” based output device and so is a bubble jet,
ink jet, and a dot matrix printer. A plotter is a “vector” based output device. The difference is
how characters and other graphics are formed. To explain what “raster” and “vector” are, let us
use the example of trying to print the letter “T”. A raster printer will make a back-and-forth
motion to create the character whereas a vector plotter will follow the path of the outline of the
character.
The laser system can actually raster the image, vector the image, or do both raster and vector
motions. The laser systems printer driver works directly with your software program to send the
correct image to the laser system. We will explain later on in this section about how this works
but for right know, we want you to understand this simple concept behind how the computer
controls the laser system:
The laser system is an output device just like a printer or plotter is. After the graphic is created
on your computer system, you print the graphic the same way you would print to a laser printer
or plot to a plotter. This information then gets sent down to the laser system through the parallel
cable and is stored in the laser systems RAM memory. Once the file is in memory, press the
“Start” button on the control panel to begin processing. The only real difference between how a
laser printer or a plotter works compared to the laser system is that the laser systems printer
driver also has controls on how much laser power as well as motion system speed is applied.
Obviously, there are many more differences between the laser system and other output
devices, but as long as the basics are clear, we can continue to learn about how the system
works.