Reader Challenge

Setting up and maintaining printers and printing services are ongoing administrative responsibilities. A wide range of tasks requires your time and energy, including configuring printers, troubleshooting print jobs that disappear, and keeping paper bins filled with the right paper type. Windows controls printing with multiple kernel-mode and user-mode services, which you probably take for granted when your printing operations run smoothly. However, you might encounter two situations in which you need to understand OS print services: when printing fails and when you take certification tests. This month's practice quiz helps prepare you for both scenarios. (Answers appear on page 28.)

Questions

1. A user clicks the Print icon in a Windows application. Which of the following actions occurs first?
1. The application loads fonts into memory.
2. The application creates a printer output file.
3. The OS loads the printer driver into memory.
4. The OS loads the font codes interface driver.
2. Which of the following statements about a printer output file is correct?
1. The OS creates the printer output file.
2. The application creates the printer output file.
3. The printer driver creates the printer output file.
4. The spooler DLL creates the printer output file.
3. Which of the following printing components translates data into codes that the printer understands? (This process is called rendering.)
1. The print spooler.
2. The print processor.
3. The printer driver.
4. The output file generator DLL.
4. A user sends a print job to a network printer. Where does the OS send the print file?
1. To the spooler on the network computer with the printer.
2. To the printer router.
3. To the local spooler.
4. To the client redirector.
5. Extra credit: The word spool, which describes the process of sending a print file to a spooler directory, is actually an acronym. What do the letters stand for?

Answers to This Month's Reader Challenge

You can find this month's Reader Challenge on page 24. The correct answers to the questions follow:

1. Answer C is correct. The application creates the printer output file after the OS loads a printer driver because the application needs the printer codes in the driver to create an output file. The OS creates the printer output file during application use regardless of whether the user prints the application, because fonts provide a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) display in the application window. Answer D is a trick answer; this type of driver doesn't exist.
2. Answer B is correct.
3. Answer B is correct. Answer D is another trick answer; an output file generator DLL doesn't exist.
4. Answer C is correct. Whether a user sends a file to a local or a network printer, the OS always passes the output file to the local spooler. The client computer uses a remote procedure call (RPC) to send the print job to the print router. The router accepts the job from the client computer and checks the location of the printer. The router then sends the processed job to the spooler on the computer with the printer (i.e., the print server). If the printer is local, the router sends the job back to the client spooler.
5. Spool stands for Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line.