4 ms·

Why is printing such a pain? Shouldn't you just be able to send a pdf file to the printer by network/usb/whatever and the printer should be able to print it? Wh

Why is printing such a pain? Shouldn't you just be able to send a pdf file to the printer by network/usb/whatever and the printer should be able to print it? Why do we still need drivers?

bgorman 6y ago
All modern printers support IPP, aka AirPrint, which does not require drivers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
_trampeltier 6y ago
Just last Friday we talked about that, why not send just a kind of PDF to the printer. We got a month ago new printer in our company. Now we just print, walk to any printer in the company and login with the card. Now we have to choose our printer job and we could change from color to bw. But we can't change the paper size.
cbhl 6y ago
Mostly cost. There are printers that have computers in them that know how to read PDF, the "networked" or "cloud" or "business" ones. But they all cost more -- anywhere from $300 to $1000+. The cheap ones just have some tiny microprocessor that knows how to read the proprietary bitmap sent from the computer, and rely on the host PC for font rendering etc. (Rendering fonts and vectors from a PDF can get pretty expensive!)
- joosters 6y ago
  It can't require too much processing, Postscript printers were a thing decades ago...
  - barrkel 6y ago
    You underestimate how much printer manufacturers would like to shave from their hardware costs. Besides, Postscript can be arbitrarily complex, and with modern PCs, PDFs may be similarly complex. Much easier to deal with that (both bugs and memory costs) in a driver which can be upgraded easily, rather than in firmware. Way back when, in the early days of laser printers, the computer wouldn't be able to keep up with the printer, and a decent printer had a faster CPU than the computer it was attached to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter#Hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter#Hardware - 12MHz CPU in the printer, attached to an 8MHz CPU in the Mac.
- jakear 6y ago
  Is there any accept-encoding type exchange? Whereby a printer can say “hey I can accept data/pdf, data/png, or data/proprietary-format-xyz? Then the OS checks what it can send, or downloads from some central store if it can’t match any.
tinus_hn 6y ago
It exists and it’s called AirPrint. Apple only though.
- berkes 6y ago
  It has been able on Linux for over 10 years now too. e.g. from 2010: https://www.finnie.org/2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/ https://www.finnie.org/2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/ IPP is standard in (most?) linux, and Airprint is basically IPP+Avahi+some proprietary-bits.

Why is printing such a pain? Shouldn't you just be able to send a pdf file to the printer by network/usb/whatever and the printer should be able to print it? Why do we still need drivers?

bgorman 6y ago

All modern printers support IPP, aka AirPrint, which does not require drivers.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

_trampeltier 6y ago

Just last Friday we talked about that, why not send just a kind of PDF to the printer. We got a month ago new printer in our company. Now we just print, walk to any printer in the company and login with the card. Now we have to choose our printer job and we could change from color to bw. But we can't change the paper size.

cbhl 6y ago

Mostly cost. There are printers that have computers in them that know how to read PDF, the "networked" or "cloud" or "business" ones. But they all cost more -- anywhere from $300 to $1000+. The cheap ones just have some tiny microprocessor that knows how to read the proprietary bitmap sent from the computer, and rely on the host PC for font rendering etc. (Rendering fonts and vectors from a PDF can get pretty expensive!)

joosters 6y ago
It can't require too much processing, Postscript printers were a thing decades ago...
- barrkel 6y ago
  You underestimate how much printer manufacturers would like to shave from their hardware costs. Besides, Postscript can be arbitrarily complex, and with modern PCs, PDFs may be similarly complex. Much easier to deal with that (both bugs and memory costs) in a driver which can be upgraded easily, rather than in firmware. Way back when, in the early days of laser printers, the computer wouldn't be able to keep up with the printer, and a decent printer had a faster CPU than the computer it was attached to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter#Hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter#Hardware - 12MHz CPU in the printer, attached to an 8MHz CPU in the Mac.
jakear 6y ago
Is there any accept-encoding type exchange? Whereby a printer can say “hey I can accept data/pdf, data/png, or data/proprietary-format-xyz? Then the OS checks what it can send, or downloads from some central store if it can’t match any.

tinus_hn 6y ago

It exists and it’s called AirPrint. Apple only though.

berkes 6y ago
It has been able on Linux for over 10 years now too. e.g. from 2010: https://www.finnie.org/2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/ https://www.finnie.org/2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/ IPP is standard in (most?) linux, and Airprint is basically IPP+Avahi+some proprietary-bits.