Software Imaging :: High Performance, High Quality, Display-List Based System Clears Windows NT 4 EMF Print Performance Bottlenecks

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High Performance, High Quality, Display-List Based System Clears Windows NT 4 EMF Print Performance Bottlenecks

OXFORD — March 19, 1998 — Software 2000 today announced the availability of PrintMagic NT for Windows NT 4. Based on Software 2000's Component Driver Architecture (CDA) the PrintMagic NT technology is immediately available for licensing by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Using the PrintMagic NT Device Driver Kit (DDK) OEMs can create printer drivers for raster color devices such as inkjets, dye sublimation and wax thermal transfer printers and GDI color lasers. Drivers so created are "World Ready" and support Pan European, Far Eastern, Middle Eastern, USA and other variants of Windows NT 4.

PrintMagic NT includes the same high quality error diffusion and color correction (EZ-Cal) systems as the Windows 3.x/95 PrintMagic product. Existing media and color calibrations can therefore be instantly leveraged across both operating system platforms. The PrintMagic halftoning, and color correction systems were originally premiered with the launch of the EPSON Stylus Color where they caused great excitement and set new market standards in driver-based RIP print quality and performance. Since that time they have continued to be refined and enhanced and as part of PrintMagic 3.x/95 have gained a commanding market position. They are currently utilized by numerous OEMs around the world including Alps, Bull, EPSON, Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, NEC, OKIDATA, Olivetti Lexikon, Tally, Triumph Adler, XEROX and many others.

Automatic Printing allows the printer driver to determine and select halftoning and color correction settings based on the graphics objects which appear on the page rather than requiring user intervention (advanced manual overrides are available for more experienced users). "Job Finishing" implements such facilities as N-Up, Reverse-Order Printing, Color Sort, Manual Duplex, Collated Copies, tiling (or poster) printing.

Tony Harris, Technical Director of Software 2000 commented about the PrintMagic NT display list architecture, "NT suffers from horrible performance penalties which can be attributed to the fact that NT 4 builds an entire page in memory prior to committing it to EMF on disk. A 720dpi, 24-bit, color A4 page for example requires 150Mb of physical memory. Even on high-end systems considerable disk thrashing makes the system virtually unusable. SW2000 has overcome these problems and achieved excellent RTA, and system response remains fluid while the display list is processed in background. As page sizes and resolutions increase, so our performance margin increases dramatically when compared with existing EMF driver solutions.", he said.

PrintMagic NT comes complete with a customizable status monitor and protocol handler that enables bi-directional (Bi-Di) handling for PrintMagic NT printer drivers. These facilities are required in order to support GDI color printers and to enable the full status read-back and device control facilities that today's users expect. These facilities supplement the I/O facilities provided as part of NT 4 which provides no mechanism for Bi-Di as part of a print job.

SW2000 has developed sample printer drivers for the HP DeskJet 890, DeskJet 1600C, Canon, Lexmark and EPSON devices in order to "prove" the system. Even complex printer drivers can be developed in a matter of days or weeks by utilizing this system and much of the work can be conducted by non-senior engineers. Development time savings are immense when compared with legacy driver development or drivers developed using PrintMagic 3.x/95.

CDA is a modular driver development technology which significantly accelerates the development of printer drivers and de-skills the work involved. CDA driver cores exist for color raster, PCL5e, PCL5c, PostScript Level 2 and PostScript 3 on Windows 3.x/95 and Windows NT 4. Since the launch of CDA in 1996, numerous major printer OEMs have leveraged CDA driver technologies. Manufacturers including Canon, OCE, Hewlett-Packard, Ricoh, Samsung, Xerox have chosen CDA to satisfy some or all of their driver needs.

About Software 2000

Software 2000 specializes in the development of driver technology for Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT and supplies to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) throughout the world. In just eight years, Software 2000 has grown into a multi-million dollar company with offices in Monterey, California and Oxford, England. The company is recognized as the largest third party developer of printer drivers in the world.

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