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In computers, a printer driver consists of one or more filters specific to a printer.
Filters allow a user or application to print many types of files without extra effort. Print jobs sent to a print server are filtered before sending them to a printer. Some filters convert job files to different formats that a printer can understadn. Other perfom page selection and ordering tasks.
Backends perfomr the most important task of all - they send the filtered print data to the printer - . The backends are the computer ports and the print spoolers.
Backends are also used to determinate the available devices. On startup each backend is asked for a list of devices it supports, and any information that is available. This allows the parallell backend to the the spooler that an EPSON Stylus Color 600 printer is attached to parallel port 1, for example.
