On Jeu 16 juin 2005 1:56, stephane richard a écrit :
Kinda french? Quebec? Go ahead and go to France and ask them that question ;-).
They talk kinda quaint and have a weird accent, but they speak French. One up on the usual attitude betweens Brits and Yanks (we're talking the unwashed masses here). Also they make good beer, which is more than the French and Americans can do. Belgians present can take that smug look off their faces and I'll have a Leffe, une fois.
OK, the Québecois *are* repsonible for global catastrophes like Céline Dion, but then they also gave rise to the extremely talented and funny François Perusse.
Oddly enough, the French-speaking community - despite the natural spikiness of the average Gaul - sticks together better than the Amigan in many ways.
Anyway, to get back to computer CUPS (rather than a foaming glass of brew), a bit of research last night convinced me that CUPS, gimp print and/or Foomatic are all of great interest, but the best system for printing that also provides many drivers not available - or easily identifiable - elsewhere is Turboprint.
I also came across a fairly detailed explanation by a professional printer driver writer explaining the problems in writing drivers other than for Windows: basically, a lot of the processing is done by the OS rather than the printer, as this makes for faster printing and cheaper printers. However, this also means that the printer driver as supplied by the manufacturer has to rely on API "hooks" in Windows.
What was not adressed, as one person pointed out in comments, was the existence of a similar system to the Windows API in CUPS. However, it does seem as though the difficulty in getting drivers for anything other than Windows is partly due to the difficulty of writing printer drivers, ignorance of the existence/usage of tools equivalent to the Windows API in other systems (MacOSX Darwin, anybody?), and an understandable refusal to release technical information which comes under company IP. Even the Microsoft service that exists only to ensure that printers work with Windows doesn't get that information.
While I'm still all for CUPS, this does give food for thought.