File Formats: Printer Command Language Format (PCL)/(PCL-XL)

The Printer Command Language (PCL) vector format was developed by Hewlett-Packard specifically to allow computers and printers to communicate with each other. The PCL files consists of  commands. The HP printers parse and decode those commands. The PCL format also supports HPGL. For more information about HPGL, refer to PLT.

In the raster toolkits, PCL files are rasterized when loaded but cannot be saved. Loading and saving this format as a vector file are provided in the LEADTOOLS Vector Imaging Pro toolkit and are unlocked when the Vector features are unlocked.

LEAD supports version 3.0, 5.0 and 6.0 of this file format.

The default extensions used by this format are: PRN, PRT, PCL and Pxl.

This format is used by Visual PCL, PCLTOOLS, redtitan EscapE and AutoVue.

This file format does not support layers or grouping, but it does support embedded raster objects.

PCL filter provides support for:

• Raster, text and rectangular area.

• Macros.

• Enhanced performance of the filter.

• HPGL mode in PCL

• Raster fonts

• RTL Raster data

• All compression methods (RLE, TIFF, Delta, Adaptive and Unencoded)

• Class 2 Run-Length encoding with line repetition

• Old versions of PCL v.3, besides v.5 and v.6.

• Viewing PCL with POSTSCRIPT data (requires the PDF filter)

• User-defined and pre-defined patterns

• Unicode symbols

• Detecting non-standard PCL/HPGL files that lack a correct header

• Truetype fonts for both PCL5 and PCL6 (windows based fonts and soft fonts)

File constants associated with this file format are:

When PCL files are rasterized, they are 24 BPP. You can read and write vector PCL files at 24 BPP.
When PLT files are rasterized, they are 4 BPP.

The following table indicates which objects LEAD can load and which objects it can save:

NOTE: This format does not support LEAD's redirected IO feature, therefore it cannot be used with L_RedirectIO, L_LoadBitmapMemory, L_LoadMemory, L_SaveBitmapMemory, or L_FeedLoad.

Required DLL: LFPCL. For a listing of the exact DLLs needed, based on the toolkit version, refer to Files To Be Included With Your Application.

Related Formats: CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile, CMX - Corel Presentation Exchange Format, DGN - Intergraph Format, DRW - Micrografx Designer DRaWing, DWF - DWF Format, DWG - DWG Format, DXF - Drawing Interchange Format, EMF - Windows Metafile Formats, GBR - Gerber Format, PCT - Macintosh Pict Format, PDF - Portable Document Format, PLT - PLT / HPGL Format, PS - PostScript Document Format, RTF - Rich Text Format, SHP - ESRI Shape Format, SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics Format, VEC - LEADTOOLS Vector Dump Format, VPG - WordPerfect Vector Format, WMF - Windows Metafile Formats, WMZ - Compressed Windows Metafile Format, E00 - ArcInfo Interchange File Format, MIF - MapInfo Interchange File Format.

Platforms

Win32, x64.