| A | B |
|---|
| American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) | Industry-standard 8-bit characters used to define text characters, consisting of 96 upper- and lowercase letters, plus 32 nonprinting control characters, each of which is numbered. These numbers were designed to achieve uniformity among computer devices for printing and the exchange of simple text documents. |
| calibration | Process of matching the print output of a printer to the visual output of a monitor. |
| Centronics connector | Connector used with older printers |
| consumables | Materials used up by printers, including paper, ink, ribbons, and toner cartridges |
| DB-25 connector | DB connector (female), commonly referred to as a parallel port connector |
| dot-matrix printer | Printer that creates each character form an array of dots. Pins striking a ribbon against the paper, one pin for each dot position, form the dots. May be a serial printer (printing one character at a time) or a line printer |
| dots per inch (dpi) | Measure of printer resolution that counts the dots the device can produce per linear (horizontal) inch. |
| dye-sublimation printer | Printer that uses a roll of heat-sensitive plastic film embedded with dyes, which are vaporized and then solidified onto specially coated paper to create a high-quality image |
| erase lamp | Component inside laser printers that uses light to make the coating of the photosensitive drum conductive. |
| fuser assembly | Mechanism in laser printers that uses two rollers to fuse toner to paper during the print process. |
| graphical device interface (GDI) | Component of Windows that utilizes the CPU rather than the printer to process a print job as a bitmapped image of each page |
| IEEE 1284 standard | governs parallel communication |
| impact printer | Uses pins and inked ribbons to print text or images on a piece of paper |
| ink cartridge | Small container of ink for inkjet printers |
| inkjet printer | Uses liquid ink, sprayed through a series of tiny jets, to print text or images on a piece of paper. |
| laser | Single-wavelength, in-phase light source that acts as the writing mechanism of the laser printer |
| laser printer | Electro-photographic printer in which a laser is used as the light source |
| maintenance kit | Commonly replaced printer components provided by many manufacturers |
| material safety data sheet (MSDS) | Standardized form that provides detailed information about potential environmental hazards and proper disposal methods associated with various PC components |
| near-letter quality (NLQ) | Designation for dot-matrix printers that use 24-pin printheads |
| network printer | Printer that connects directly to a network |
| pages per minute (ppm) | Speed of a printer |
| parallel port | Connection for the synchronous, high-speed flow of data along parallel lines to a device, usually a printer. |
| photosensitive drum | Aluminum cylinder coated with particles of photosensitive compounds. Used in a laser printer and usually contained within the toner cartridge |
| PostScript | Language defined by Adobe Systems, Inc. for describing how to create an image on a page. The description is independent of the resolution of the device that will actually create the image. It includes a technology for defining the shape of a font and creating a raster image at many different resolutions and sizes. |
| primary corona | Wire located near the photosensitive drum in a laser printer, that is charged with extremely high voltage to form an electric field, enabling voltage to pass to the photosensitive drum, thus charging the photosensitive particles on the surface of the drum |
| print resolution | Quality of a print image |
| print spooler | Area of memory that queues up print jobs that the printer will handle sequentially |
| printer control language (PCL) | Printer control language created by Hewlett-Packard and used on a broad cross-section of printers. |
| printhead | Case that holds the printwires in a dot-matrix printer |
| printwires | Grid of tiny pins in a dot-matrix printer that strike an inked printer ribbon to produce images on paper |
| raster image | Pattern of dots representing what the final product should look like. |
| raster image processor (RIP) | Component in a printer that translates the raster image into commands for the printer. |
| resolution enhancement technology (RET) | Technology that uses small dots to smooth out jagged edges that are typical of printers without RET, producing a higher quality print job. |
| solid ink printer | Printer that uses solid sticks of nontoxic “ink.” |
| static charge eliminator | Device used to remove a static charge |
| thermal printer | Printers that use heated printheads to create high-quality images on special or plain paper. |
| toner | A fine powder made up of plastic particles bonded to iron particles, used by laser printers to create text and images |
| toner cartridge | Object used to store the toner in a laser printer |
| transfer corona | Thin wire, usually protected by other thin wires, that applies a positive charge to the paper during the laser printing process, drawing the negatively charged toner particles off of the drum and onto the paper. |
| XML Paper Specification (XPS) print path | Improved printing subsystem included in Windows Vista. Has enhanced color management and better print layout fidelity |
