Editing Page description language (section)

{{Short description|Computer language}}
{{More citations needed|date=May 2020}}
In [[digital printing]], a '''page description language''' ('''PDL''') is a computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output [[bitmap]] (or generally [[raster graphics]]). An overlapping term is '''printer control language''', which includes Hewlett-Packard's [[Printer Command Language]] (PCL). [[PostScript]] is one of the most noted page description languages. The [[markup language]] adaptation of the PDL is the page description markup language.

Page description languages are text (human-readable) or binary data streams, usually intermixed with text or graphics to be printed. They are distinct from graphics [[application programming interface]]s (APIs) such as [[Graphics Device Interface|GDI]] and [[OpenGL]] that can be called by software to generate graphical output.