61–70 of 96 posts
I’ve been printing using IPP with Haiku for years (since no drivers), works well. Good to see Windows finally go down this route as well, since installing crappy printer drivers was always an issue (dealing with vendor crapware).
Do you dual-boot Linux or Windows at all?
I'm guessing you put up with one of them (or something made by Apple) at work...?
Question, why the printers cannot act like web servers? Just receive a REST api request and then proceed to do their own thing (aka drive the printer to execute the request). Why my computer needs to know how to operate the printer?
What I do not understand is why the print spooler runs as the highest-privileged SYSTEM account. Any vulnerability in the print stack is basically game over. It seems to me that changing this long due and should be possible without dropping support to all old drivers (and printers).
An actual good printer would have enough compute (Raspberry Pi would be sufficient) and storage (a small ssd) to handle the task by itself. Then printing is nothing more than copying a file to the printer.
Looks like all printers will need to be Mopria certified, which is the first time I've heard of this certification: https://mopria.org/certified-products
I wonder if this will impact specialized photo and other graphic art printers? Things like the large format Epson and other Pro printers. What about plotters and vinyl cutout printers? They usually have a ton of driver specific settings, etc. for tuning the output. How will these settings be managed without drivers specific to them?
I wish I knew anything about printing, but why can’t my computer just send a PDF to the printer and have it deal with the details itself? I don’t quite understand the need for the computer to have to get into the nitty gritty other than just sending the source and a JSON. Printers nowadays can handle the printing autonomously (obviously, since they can print via WiFi/bluetooth/pendrive since 2005)
All this requires some interaction with the user. IPP Everywhere covers a lot but I'm guessing there will be some niche requirements that it misses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You very often also need some backchannel from the printer, e.g. for toner levels, available paper sizes, installed options. But there is a more important point: Printer manufacturers also don't think like this. They desperately want to know what you are printing, order overpriced ink for you, sell additional services like print-by-mail, etc. All that won't work without lots of permissions for the printer support app…
> Printer manufacturers also don't thing like this at this point, what are they gonna do? Not provide windows drivers?
I think this is probably a solved problem. Windows would have to support whatever API Macs use.
The real problem is the printer makers want to make printers as cheap as possible and sell lots of ink to rake in the $. An actual good printer would have enough compute (Raspberry Pi would be sufficient) and storage (a small ssd) to handle the task by itself. Then printing is nothing more than copying a file to the printer.
I don't think they want to. They are forced into it by the razor thin margins on cheap hardware. It's a race to the bottom.