Universal Printer Driver

The Universal printer driver (Unidriver) is sometimes referred to as the raster driver because it supports raster graphics printing. The Unidriver can carry out requests on most types of printers. Each print device vendor provides a device-specific minidriver (called a characterization file) that works with the Unidriver to communicate with its print devices.

This driver includes support for 24-bit color, scaleable TrueType fonts, device fonts, compression-run length encoding (RLE), and Tag Image File Format (TIFF) version 4.0. It also includes mechanisms that provide for smaller, more efficient bitmaps. These mechanisms include ignoring whitespace and supporting rules. (Hewlett-Packard LaserJet and compatible print devices use rules to print repeating elements on a page—such as bullets in a list—by repeating the information from a single bit of source code.)

The Universal printer driver consists of the following component files:

• Rasdd.dll is the printer graphics driver for printer languages based on raster (bitmap) images, including PCL, and most dot matrix printer languages.

• Rasddui.dll is the printer interface driver.

• Raster minidriver is the characterization data file. The filename for this component depends on the print device or printer family. Check the documentation that accompanies your print device.

The Windows NT Universal driver is a generic, text only (TTY) driver. It prints only text, and it prints it in the native font of the print device, regardless of any formatting in the original document.