zlacker

>>pangor+(OP)
I wish that the intelligence in printers would migrate back to the computer. Having printers with their own complex formats (PCL, PostScript, etc.) only makes them inscrutable and lends itself to proprietary competing formats and printouts which never gets quite right. I think the original NeXT machine was on the right track with their simple bitmap-only laser printer, where the PostScript processing was done on the computer side.

>>teddyh+Ie
That's interesting that you feel this way, personally I take the exact opposite position. I want printer drivers to be a thing of the past. I just want to pass the printer a file that represents a document and let it handle things for me. Some kind of standard format, probably something in the Postscript/PDF family tree.

Likewise for scanners. I want to just have a HTTP API or something like that where I just "GET" an endpoint and the scanner hands me a file in some reasonable format.

The drivers are always the worst part of devices that allow computers to interact with paper, so let's get rid of them altogether.

>>wolrah+6C
> I just want to pass the printer a file that represents a document and let it handle things for me. Some kind of standard format […]

…like a bitmap? Turning documents into bitmaps is easy to do in the computer now. We’re a long way from the time when (due to limits on memory, processing, and bandwidth) you had to encode your document into a complicated command language which you could send to a printer.

> […] the scanner hands me a file in some reasonable format.

Like a bitmap?

I really don’t see how you’re disagreeing with me, here.