Why isn't there a universal printer driver
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MS writes universal drivers that provide basic functionality for lots of other devices, so I'm wondering if there's a reason why they can't do the same for printers to end the unending driver problems with older printers and newer versions of windows. I, vaguely, recall something like this existing in the DOS era, but dot matrix printers were much simpler than today's inkjet/laser printers.
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
As some of the above have answered there are several 'universal' printer drivers. By that I mean if the printer supports the particular standard you can just send it the file according to that standard and it will work. PCL is pretty common, but it's not really a universal standard and it has some nasty limitations - so I'll exclude it from this list. SGML - some big printing engines (used by short run publishing houses) directly support SGML. However finding the software for your PC to generate the SGML is another story. Don't try coding SGML yourself you'll go blind. Postscript - yep, does work. Except that a lot of the printer implementations require a Ctrl-D at the end of the file to get them going, plus a lot of other quirks. Programming in Postscript is another great way to mess with your head, or in some cases the printer if they don't really support Postscript properly. XPS - Microsoft's take on this subject. XPS is the fixed page subset of XAML. There's a few companies implementing XPS and selling the software to printer manufacturers. The manufacturer can either implement a printer driver that accepts XPS and translates it for their printer (not what you want) or do what MS wants and have the printer natively understand XPS. As far as a print language XPS is superior to Postscript, but then you'd expect that considering it's a lot newer. You can also generate it with code really easily without going completely bonkers. It also has a lot of good 'printer handling' facilities within it, that deals with all of the vagaries introduced by some many different makes, models and capabilities of printers.
I just love Koalas - they go great with Bacon.
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I fully agree but often you have to install the crapware just to get the driver out of the package. VMs have helped a lot here :-) I remember working as a tech supporting home workers with multi function printers and going spare that every time we had to buy a new printer HP would have changed the drivers for their machines and we'd have to tweak the images that we had for building new PCs yet again (not to mention the change in cartridge spec every time a new printer came out)
You have to go to HP's site to get the driver only version sometimes. Personally, I don't buy HP printers for that reason alone. Currently all my printers are Canon.
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