Virtual printer

When a document is "printed" by a virtual printer, instead of physically printing it on paper or other material the underlying software processes the images of its pages in some other way, often resulting in a file being produced or the images being transmitted.

In the early 1960s the B5500 Master Control Program (MCP) operating system included virtual printers, called "Printer Backups" in the form of Printer Backup Tapes (PBT) and Printer Backup Disks (PBD).

IBM's VM/370 operating system allows users to spool a virtual printer (or punch) file to another user, who can read it as input.

This provides a basic means of file transfer.

Typical uses of virtual printers include:

A GTK+ dialog box for printing to either a virtual printer (to create a PDF or PostScript file) or a physical printer