This document discusses different types of printer drivers that can be used in a Citrix environment, including Universal printer drivers and standard printer drivers. It recommends using Universal printer drivers when possible as they reduce administration overhead compared to standard device-specific drivers. The Citrix Universal XPS printer driver creates print jobs in the XPS format, while the Citrix Universal printer driver uses EMF. Standard drivers refer to those from Windows or the printer manufacturer. The Universal driver policy can be used to control which types of drivers are used for printer autocreation.
This document discusses different types of printer drivers that can be used in a Citrix environment, including Universal printer drivers and standard printer drivers. It recommends using Universal printer drivers when possible as they reduce administration overhead compared to standard device-specific drivers. The Citrix Universal XPS printer driver creates print jobs in the XPS format, while the Citrix Universal printer driver uses EMF. Standard drivers refer to those from Windows or the printer manufacturer. The Universal driver policy can be used to control which types of drivers are used for printer autocreation.
This document discusses different types of printer drivers that can be used in a Citrix environment, including Universal printer drivers and standard printer drivers. It recommends using Universal printer drivers when possible as they reduce administration overhead compared to standard device-specific drivers. The Citrix Universal XPS printer driver creates print jobs in the XPS format, while the Citrix Universal printer driver uses EMF. Standard drivers refer to those from Windows or the printer manufacturer. The Universal driver policy can be used to control which types of drivers are used for printer autocreation.
This document discusses different types of printer drivers that can be used in a Citrix environment, including Universal printer drivers and standard printer drivers. It recommends using Universal printer drivers when possible as they reduce administration overhead compared to standard device-specific drivers. The Citrix Universal XPS printer driver creates print jobs in the XPS format, while the Citrix Universal printer driver uses EMF. Standard drivers refer to those from Windows or the printer manufacturer. The Universal driver policy can be used to control which types of drivers are used for printer autocreation.
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as doc, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1/ 3
Types of Printer Drivers
There are two categories of printer drivers:
Citrix Universal Printer driver.
Standard printer drivers; specifically, Windows printer drivers or manufacturer’s printer drivers. These drivers are covered in this topic. However, Citrix recommends, when possible, using the Citrix Universal Printer driver exclusively because it reduces the number of drivers on farm servers and simplifies administration.
Universal Printer Drivers Overview
The Citrix Universal Printer drivers provide basic printer driver functionality to almost all printers, regardless of make or model. Deploying one of these drivers relieves the burden of administering multiple printer drivers and avoids problems with driver maintenance, replication, and other client printing issues.
In XenApp, Citrix provides several different types of Universal printer drivers:
Citrix Universal XPS Printer driver Citrix Universal Printer driver Stock or Standard Windows printer drivers
Citrix Universal XPS Printer driver
This driver is based on the Windows XML Paper Specification (XPS) printing technology introduced in Windows Server 2008. Windows XPS printing technology uses XML to create a platform-independent “electronic paper” similar to Adobe’s PDF format.
The XPS format is a device-independent XML-based spool file format that provides a compressed XML description of a page’s graphic elements. Printing devices can use XPS- formatted print jobs directly without translation.
The Citrix Universal XPS Printer driver creates the XPS print job using the Microsoft XPS printer driver on the client device. The Citrix Universal XPS Printer driver obtains printing device-specific information from the client device.
Provided your farm servers are running XenApp 5.0 and your client devices have .NET 3.0 installed on them, which comes with Windows Vista, you can use the Citrix Universal XPS Printer driver.
Citrix Universal Printer driver
This driver uses Windows’ Enhanced Metafile Format (EMF) technology. EMF is a device- independent format for capturing the graphical elements printed on each page of a print job. A client-side renderer uses EMF and provides a substantial reduction in the processing time of Citrix Universal print jobs on the client.
Stock or standard Windows printer drivers
Citrix also uses standard printer drivers, which are sufficiently compatible to support a broad range of printing devices, to provide universal printing functionality. You can use these printer drivers for universal printing for non-Windows plug-ins, such as Macintosh or UNIX clients. These drivers include the following: HP Color LaserJet 4500 PCL 5 (Citrix PCL5c Universal Driver) HP Color LaserJet 4500 PS (Citrix PS Universal Printer Driver) HP LaserJet Series II (Citrix PCL4 Universal Driver)
Effects of Using Universal Printer drivers
When a Universal Printer driver is configured, by default, XenApp uses the EMF-based Citrix Universal Printer. If you change the default driver to be the Citrix Universal XPS Printer driver, the XPS driver is used provided the plugin or client device meet the XPS driver’s requirements. If a requirement is missing, XenApp uses (that is, “falls back” to) the EMF-based Citrix Universal Printer.
If you use the Citrix Universal XPS Printer driver, the print jobs it processes might have a smaller footprint on your network. However, users might perceive the EMF-based Citrix Universal driver as printing faster. The EMF-based driver spools print jobs one page at a time, so each page prints as the printer receives it. In contrast, with the XPS-based printer driver, printers cannot print until they receive the last page of the job.
Citrix Universal XPS Printer Driver Overview
The Citrix Universal Printer driver uses Microsoft’s XPS printer driver on the server to create an XPS print job that can be read by the printing device. It uses this process:
1. The XPS print job (*.*xps) that will be ultimately read by the printing device is created on the server in a session: On the server hosting the published application, the application sends the data to the printer (object) for the target printing device The printer object then sends the print data to the XPS printer driver on the server where it is rendered into an XPS file 2. The XenApp server sends the XPS file across the printing virtual channel to the XPS Print Helper (which is part of the Citrix XenApp Plugin for Hosted Apps and the Web Interface). 3. The XPS Print Helper does one of two things: If the XPS printer driver is bound to a specific printer that was auto-created at the beginning of a session, the XPS file is sent directly to the printer and the XPS Viewer does not appear. If the XPS printer driver is not bound to a specific printer, the user must choose a printer. The XPS file is sent to the XPS Viewer in Internet Explorer and the user can select the printer from Internet Explorer.
Standard Printer Drivers Overview
In this topic, the term standard printer drivers refers to any printer driver that is not a Citrix Universal Printer driver. There are two types of standard printer drivers:
Windows printer drivers. Refers to the drivers included with Windows operating systems. Also known as native printer drivers because they are part of, or native to, the operating system. These drivers are manufacturer-specific and they are the drivers that Windows automatically installs when you use the Windows Add Printer wizard. These are not synonymous with manufacturer’s drivers.
Manufacturer’s printer drivers. Refers to the printer drivers that come with a printer; for example, on a CD or as a download from the manufacturer’s Web site. Also known as third-party printer drivers. You may need to use standard drivers from the Windows operating system or the manufacturer in some situations, including:
When your environment has extremely new printers, older printers, or specialty printers When users require specialty printing features that are not available through the Citrix Universal Printer driver, such as support for certain paper sizes If you must use standard printer drivers, use the Windows printer drivers included with the Windows operating system, over the manufacturers drivers, whenever possible. The drivers with Windows typically go through a higher level of Windows certification that includes testing for multiuser environments. However, sometimes if there is not a comparable Windows driver or if users require a feature, such as postscript, you may need to use the manufacturer’s driver for that printing device.
The Universal driver policy rule lets you control which type of printer drivers are used during printer autocreation. You can specify: Model-specific drivers only Universal drivers only Universal drivers only if a model-specific driver is not available If you do not enable the Universal driver policy rule, XenApp uses model-specific drivers if they are available. If XenApp cannot find the correct model-specific driver, it uses a Universal printer driver.
If you are supporting standard device-specific printer drivers, determine how you want to manage the drivers on your farm. See Managing Printer Drivers.
