I think we'd all benefit if Microsoft had more direct control over legacy print drivers. Printer manufacturers seem some of the worst offenders in bad driver so

I think we'd all benefit if Microsoft had more direct control over legacy print drivers. Printer manufacturers seem some of the worst offenders in bad driver software in general. I also assume that if Microsoft had the ability to create more generic printer drivers they would. Given the huge amount of older legacy hardware that falls under any of the other Generic Class Drivers it kind of sticks out as a sore thumb how few printers have generic drivers. (IIRC, there's a Generic PostScript driver that works with early [Apple led era] laser printers back when PostScript was new and considered sufficient as the only language between the computer and the printer, and nothing recent.) My understanding is that most inkjet printers especially speak OEM proprietary languages that's not just PostScript or PDF (or Microsoft's mostly failed dream of an open XML format with fewer patent hangups than PS/PDF they tried in XPS). You would assume some of those proprietary languages include commands at least ancillary to the cartridge DRM (initiating checks, validating DRM status codes and checksums, things like that) if not directly involved. DRM is the main reason to blame these proprietary languages for remaining proprietary and not well standardized across/between manufacturers (and thus don't leave us with enough generic OS printer drivers today), though it's probably not the sole reason for the proprietary languages. I'm sure the manufacturers also have other reasons for keeping their printers using proprietary languages such as not wanting to license PS/PDF or leak too many low level details of their hardware designs (beyond just possibly leaking DRM information) or patented "secret sauce" of their own languages they believe to be a competitive asset. Microsoft's XPS push was one attempt to get them off proprietary languages and allow them to offload far more driver work to Windows directly. Seems a shame none of the printer manufacturers seemed to take them up on that.