Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt@???> wrote:

> FWIW, other printers are handled using some other IPC protocol. Same information sent back and forth, but a different socket and protocol. My Brother MFC8880 uses IPP and... I forget the name of the other protocol.

FWIW, while it generally costs more, I've always (both for work and home) tried to stick to Postscript [compatible] printers. With a well written single driver, you can print to ANY Postscript driver and get the same result subject to the capabilities of the printer - none of this having to know the resolution like with HPGL. By adding a capabilities file, you can intelligently use the features that are available - that's how the Mac "LaserWriter" driver worked, all you needed was a '.ppc' file to use printer specific capabilities.


You can also, with a little effort, modify the print job between source and printer. One time (on a SCO OpenServer system we ran the company on), I redefined the showpage operator at the beginning of certain jobs so that printed faxes would have a header (date, time, phone number) with the text outlined in white so as to still be readable if over a black background. That's a darned lot harder to do with an HPGL job.