On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 00:08, Bryan Murdock wrote: > You think those $40 inkjet printers have much brains on board? It's all > in the software driver. Fortunately like Michael said, there are good > Linux drivers for these available too, so they aren't exclusively > winprinters, they can be linprinters too :)
I think I used the term winprinter a little bit too generically. Most inkjets have no brains in them. They are pretty much like the dot-matrix printers of yore. The page is assembled graphically in your computer and fed to them one in bitmap form, one row/swipe at a time. These printers aren't actually winprinters though. Technically winprinters are printers that essentially take data in the form of raw Windows GDI (graphic device interface) data streams. The problem here is that they work the same way as the printers I just mentioned--they get fed a data stream and print one swipe at a time--but to print to them you have to have some kind of GDI implementation/emulation. The problem is equivalent to reverse-engineering MS Office file formats. This is probably a gross over-simplification of the issues, but that's the general idea. I'm pretty sure that most of HP's printers aren't GDI printers, even the simple inkjets, which makes Linux support easier. I'm extremely grateful that HP has good linux supporters inside that develop drivers and other forms of support. Linux end-users represent such a small market (maybe half of the macintosh market) that most companies don't even find it worth their while. For some reason many of the companies that have no linux support also refuse to release any specifications either, trying to protect some small advantage they have. Then in the end, those that really want it reverse-engineer it anyway. HP as always been pretty good with their hardware as far as this type of thing goes. Michael > > Bryan > > > ____________________ > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list -- Michael Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
