ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Some posts in a recent thread and printing from mobile devices got me re-thinking an old question I had. Maybe some of the tech people here can explain - why are printer drivers so complex?
When I install an OS, I know it's loading hundreds (thousands?) of printer drivers. Even within a similar model line, there are different drivers. Why is this so complex? I mean, all printers do basically the same thing - take a document on your screen and 'paint' the dark spots dark, etc. I know that the way they go about this varies with the hardware, but doesn't the FW take care of this? Why can't there be a generic driver that just sends generic commands to printers?
Something that makes me think this is totally do-able is that there are some printers that can print a document directly from a flash drive or memory card, with no computer connection. So why can't we just send the document (or a standard image created by the computer) to the printer? That's what happens when one of these printers prints from a storage device.
I can plug in a CRT monitor, or an LCD monitor, different size monitors, etc - and I don't need a driver for that monitor (just one for my graphics card). These devices obviously work differently internally and convert standard input to something they display, so why aren't printers the same?
TIA for any insights.
-ERD50
When I install an OS, I know it's loading hundreds (thousands?) of printer drivers. Even within a similar model line, there are different drivers. Why is this so complex? I mean, all printers do basically the same thing - take a document on your screen and 'paint' the dark spots dark, etc. I know that the way they go about this varies with the hardware, but doesn't the FW take care of this? Why can't there be a generic driver that just sends generic commands to printers?
Something that makes me think this is totally do-able is that there are some printers that can print a document directly from a flash drive or memory card, with no computer connection. So why can't we just send the document (or a standard image created by the computer) to the printer? That's what happens when one of these printers prints from a storage device.
I can plug in a CRT monitor, or an LCD monitor, different size monitors, etc - and I don't need a driver for that monitor (just one for my graphics card). These devices obviously work differently internally and convert standard input to something they display, so why aren't printers the same?
TIA for any insights.
-ERD50