Comparing PCL, PDF and HTML file sizes

For normal business documents (mostly text with some tables and limited graphics), PCL produced by printing to a Windows PCL printer driver, then zipped, is 1.5x to 32x smaller than PDF!

This translates to a real, substantial advantage in download bandwidth on both client and server links -- the user will see the document much faster. The average advantage among the documents we tested is about 13:1, compared to the output of Acrobat PDF Distiller. (PDF Writer produces files just 3.5 times larger on average, but does not accurately reproduce the original document and so typically can't be used.)

Unfortunately, the sometimes-inefficient PCL output from Windows printer drivers can be as large as the output of Acrobat PDF Distiller. But when both are zipped, PCL is again smaller, and zipped PDF cannot be viewed directly.

One of the documents (rightfax.doc) we selected was particularly appropriate for PDF because it contains several bitmap images on each page. Even so, the PDF is about 7x larger than zipped PCL. The clear conclusion is that zipped PCL is an excellent solution for a wide array of documents, some of which contain significant graphics. This enables a single viewer - SwiftView - to be used in many applications. More importantly, it allows a single trivial process - zipping already existing print files - to be the standard electronic document creation process.

MS Excel spreadsheet of results. Install SwiftView to view

Detailed description of the files we used

We created or obtained 6 files for size comparison:

svm_500.doc - The SwiftView Technical Reference Manual, 94 pages in Word 97, with text in several fonts and lots of indents and headers.
svrel510.doc - Our release notes, 7 pages in Word 97, text plus a small Swift (bird) image in header of each page.
floor.tcw - A TurboCAD 6 drawing of a floor plan.
phonebill.doc - A telephone bill simulated in Word 97.
rightfax.doc - A 3rd party datasheet in Word 97 with lots of grahical screenshots on every page. PDF is optimized for this type of file.
files.xls - One page Excel 97 spreadsheet comparing these file sizes, including Swift image.

Here's how we obtained the PCL, PDF and HTML versions:

PCL was obtained printing to a standard LaserJet 4 printer driver from the original program (i.e. Office 97 or TurboCAD 6) on Windows 98. The driver was set to 300 dpi, "download TT fonts as bitmap soft fonts", "use vector graphics" and "fine dithering". The process was identical to printing to any LaserJet 4 or later printer, except "print to file" was selected on the Windows print dialog.
PDF output was obtained using Acrobat 4.0 in combination with Office 97 and TurboCAD. Both Acrobat Distiller and Acrobat PDFWriter were tried printing directly from each application, often with vastly different results.
HTML and GIF conversions were performed using HotMetal Pro 5. The results require considerable editing to achieve final appearance but this would only make the files a bit larger, so this is a fair comparison.

Please note that the file size noted for PCL/HPGL is the zipped file size. Why is that fair? Because SwiftView directly views zipped PCL and HPGL files completely transparently to users. There is no extra process involved. These ".ZHP files" are effectively the native SwiftView format except, of course, that they are industry standard PCL data compressed using industry standard ZIP - 100% open.

We will provide samples of any or all of the original files we used upon request.

files.zhp
svm_500.zhp
svrel510.zhp
phonebill.zhp
rightfax.zhp

More about the advantages of PCL over PDF