SPL - Microsoft? Windows Spool File Format

Spool 파일 위치: c:\windows\system32\spool\printers as the default location.

대부분의 Printer Driver 가 생성하는 SPL 데이터는 EMF 형식임.

Undocumented Printing Wiki
http://www.undocprint.org

SPL - Microsoft? Windows Spool File Format
http://www.undocprint.org/formats/winspool/spl


Introduction

The print job’s spooled data is contained in a spool file.

For each print job there are two spool files generated by the Windows? NT/2000 spooler. One file with the .SHD extension for job settings, and one with the .SPL extension for the drawing commands.



RAW-SPL

In the case of RAW data, the content of the file is exactly the same as the data send to the printer.

So this data could be PCL, PostScript, ESC-P, CaPSL, Prescribe or similar.


When is RAW used?

A Print Processor must support the RAW data type or it simply won’t work. Beyond that, the data types it supports have little effect.

The decision on whether to spool EMF or RAW is made by GDI based on various factors.

More information on the Spool Files page.


EMF-SPL

EMF stands for Enhanced Metafile. You can find information on standard EMF in the Windows Platform SDK.

Basically the SPL files consist of one or more standard EMF files, surrounded by some extra records. The EMF SPL files contain a special version of EMF, not compatible with standard EMF, although most of the records are the same.