[Coco] Coco and Modern Printers

[Mark McDougall]

On 15/09/2012 2:32 PM, Chad H wrote:

> Well, in Windows 8 they have supposedly redesigned the driver system into
> some sort of "universal class driver" platform.

<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/07/25/simplifying-printing-in-windows-8.aspx>

Reading between the lines, it's mostly marketing guff, and nothing that 
couldn't be done today in Win7.  Modern printers speak one of a few 
'languages' (eg. XPS, PCL, PS) that Microsoft are going to wrap into a 
single 'printer framework' and, together with a 'well known' ID programmed 
into the printer, auto-select the correct generic (language) driver for that 
printer. Remains to be seen if the manufacturers are going to be content 
with the vanilla wrapping of the Microsoft driver - I suspect, like now, 
most will opt to provide an 'enhanced' driver with more features in the 
control panel UI applet.

So, wouldn't it make sense, theoretically, that if one could
> encapsulate the "Windows 8 Universal Printer Class Driver" in some sort
> of stand-alone serial to USB printer interface, that could run virtual ly
> any USB printer that was designed for Windows 8!?  Right?

This makes it easier to support a wide range of (USB) printers.

It does *NOT* make it easier to support any one modern USB printer. As 
others have alluded to, you still need multi MB of memory and a good pile of 
code to support any modern printer, whether they speak XPS, PCL, PS etc etc 
- and this INCLUDES the so-called Win8 universal printer (184MB to be 
exact). You can't just take a small micro and have it output text on a 
modern printer like it was a line printer, they simply don't work that way 
any more. :(

Running Linux/CUPS etc on a suitable platform, as others suggested, may be 
the way to go. I personally feel a bit funny about having a printer 'box' 
that is many more times powerful than the machine doing the printing, but 
that's just me. I'd probably just use a PC. Each to his own of course.

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"