What Is an EMF Spool File?
When an application sends pages to a printer, they are held in an intermediary file that the application can write to and the printer driver can read from simultaneously. This speeds up the print process because control can return to the application before the printer has finished printing the document. Usually, this spool file is held in the raw printer page definition language (which could be PCL, PostScript, or one of many other options) but in Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 2003 it is possible to make the spooler use a different, more device-independent format knowns a an EMF spool file. The file layout of an EMF spool file is not officially documented by Microsoft, but a bit of investigation reveals that it is a series of enhanced metafile records (one for each page) and a number of other record types that are specific to the business of printing these pages To generate EMF spool files from Windows NT, 200, XP, and 2003, select the printer properties and on the scheduling tab select “K
Related Questions
- The WMF/EMF images that I am converting are producing large file size PDFs and look horrible when you zoom the PDF page - can this be corrected?
- What causes Incomplete Spool Files, File System Full messages, or Low System Resources warnings which keep me from printing index prints?
- Does generated EMF image file contain printed graphics objects?
