Why do fiery rips have both postscript and PCL drivers?

Why do fiery rips have a choice of both postscript and PCL drivers?

When would I want to use the PCL driver instead of the postscript driver (or when would I want to use the postscript driver instead of the PCL driver?)

Why do they go to the effort of writing the two separate different drivers for the same machines?

 

most b/w machine will have both and most color machines stick to postscript, the major reason being quality vs speed. pcl is faster (although i don't believe by much) and i believe produces a smaller file, postscript is slower and bigger but is better for jobs that might involve graphics. to see which one to use try print some test from both driver and decide what's best for you.

 

iirc, part of it is licensing. Adobe gets a fee for every postscript driver shipped. Plus, when printing pdf & other Adobe related jobs, using a pcl driver (or even an outdated postscript driver) will whack some of the graphics on the page.