abstract:A page description language (PDL) is a language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap. An overlapping term is printer control language, which includes Hewlett-Packard's PCL.
Since its incorporation three decades ago, Adobe has set its sights on creating software applications that were ahead of their time, starting with the PostScript pagedescriptionlanguage that was immediately picked up by Apple for use in its printers.