Windows Printing System

A Winprinter (similar to a Winmodem) is a print processor on Microsoft Windows that uses software to do all the print processing instead of requiring the printer hardware to do it. It works by rendering an image to a bitmap on the host computer and then sending the bitmap to the printer.

This allows low-cost printers to be built by printer manufacturers, because all the page composition is done in software. A Winprinter uses the internal graphics display subsystem of Windows, Graphics Device Interface (GDI) to prepare the output. Hence, the printer is often also called a GDI printer.

In general, usually, the lowest-cost current-model laser printers are GDI devices. Most manufacturers also produce more flexible models that add PCL compatibility, or PostScript, or both. In most cases it is only the very lowest-cost models in any given manufacturer's range that are GDI-only.