System Administration Guide: Solaris Printing

Handling Special Printing Modes

A print filter handles special printing modes and requests to print specific pages. A special printing mode is needed to print any characteristics of print requests that require a customized filter.

Filters handle the following characteristics:

The LP print service provides default settings for these characteristics. However, a print filter can handle some characteristics more efficiently. For example, some printers can handle multiple copies more efficiently than the LP print service. So, in this case, you can provide a filter for multiple-copy page control.