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Modern printers usually work one of two ways: You can feed them directly a typical printer language (PostScript, PCL or PDF), or you work with CUPS PPD files. B
by yyyk 4y ago
Modern printers usually work one of two ways: You can feed them directly a typical printer language (PostScript, PCL or PDF), or you work with CUPS PPD files. Both are userspace.
It would be easiest to see if there's a PPD for closely related printer* - most manufacturers reuse components and/or evolve them incrementally - and start modifying stuff from there. There's a decent chance it would already work for basic functionality, and that you'll be able to improve it by trial and error. If you are lucky, you may be able to get a decent driver without even needing to bother with USB sniffing.
* e.g. A similar Canon printer by model name.
- pessimizer 4y ago> Modern printers usually work one of two ways Are 15 year old photo printers modern?
- sgt 4y agoYes, since the tech hasn't changed much
- Underphil 4y ago15 years ago is only 2007.
- hutzlibu 4y agoYeah. I think I was someone else back then. And I think quite some people and events did not yet exist back then. But printers might not have fundamentally changed in that time, the way mobile phones have for example ..
- Underphil 4y agoI don't recall printers changing all that much since the early 2000s at all. I mean they added USB, WiFi, Bluetooth and other such things but the protocols to talk to them largely remain the same. There's only so many ways to tell the machine to 'replicate this but on paper'.
- pessimizer 4y agoI love the sentiment. 15 years young!
- shakna 4y agoThe IPP protocol, how most printers work today over a network, first became popular about 20 years ago, and hasn't really changed much since. Windows 2000 had full support builtin, and CUPS has had it for about the same timeframe, making it really damn easy to print anything, from any device built since, and its all in userspace.
- the_only_law 4y ago> making it really damn easy to print anything, from any device built since I guess at some point they had to ruin it by making all consumer printers use buggy wifi stacks.
- zamalek 4y agoYou might the PPD in a Windows installer.