PCL (Printer Control Language) is currently considered a standard format for documents that are prepared for printing. Although it was initially designed only for Hewlett-Packard inkjet printers at its release in the 1980s, the PCL format was gradually adopted by other brands as well and nowadays it is compatible with most laser-jet printers.
PCL is a great alternative to PostScript, not only because it is more widely adopted in the industry, but also because it is simpler, faster to operate and cheaper. The PCL format is based on an open language and it is “printer-ready” — it can be operated even from DOS or UNIX. This gives more advantages to PCL than to other similar formats such as PDF or TIFF, making it a reliable and convenient extension for archiving printable documents.
