Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:09:13 -0500 (CDT) From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS Message-ID: <201110292009.p9TK9DCo083010@mail.r-bonomi.com> In-Reply-To: <20111029072824.76540c54@scorpio>
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> From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sat Oct 29 06:29:33 2011
> Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 07:28:24 -0400
> From: Jerry <jerry@seibercom.net>
> To: FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
> Subject: Re: Fast personal printing _without_ CUPS
>
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:27:03 -0500 (CDT)
> Robert Bonomi articulated:
>
> > Your insistance on trying to impose -your- standards on the world, and
> > denying them the 'freedom of choice' to make their own decisions on
> > the matter -- e.g. "anyone offering such products should be to some
> > degree held legally responsible to their worth" -- is a fascist
> > mind-set. You 'know better' than anybody else, what is 'right' _for_
> > them. <snort>
> >
> > BTW, I'd _love_ to see Microsoft "held legally respnsible" for _their_
> > product shortcomings. They'd be out of business in a week at the
> > outside.
>
> Once again your argument is pathetic.
What argument is that? That you are trying to impose _your_ standards on
on the world? That you would deny people the freedom to make up their
own minds about whether they want vendor liability, versus accepting that
risk for themselves?
> This discussion has gone on long enough and I am already bored by it.
[drivelectomy -- ad hominems, and fact-free ranting removed]
Poor ignorant, ill-informed, Jerry. The fool doesn't know that there *is*
an existing, absolutely 'standard -- meaning 'totally uniform across all
versions of Unix, *AND* Unix look-alikes -- that is available to every
printer vendor.
Any printer manufacturer that so desires _can_ produce a *SINGLE* program
source that will allow a 'host based' printer to work on _any_ Unix (or
look-alike) platform. That program can be distributed as a single 'platform-
independant' file, using any (platform independant) 'interpreted' language OF
THEIR CHOICE -- e.g.Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, or anything similar -- or as
a 'native' executable (although that would probably require compiling and
linking on each environment) for optimum performance/efficiency.
The entire specifications that this program must be written to are about
eight lines long.
Installation/use directions are even shorter:
Put the file 'somewhere convenient' in the file system.
Make sure it is marke 'executable' by all -- i.e. 'chmod a+x'
Place the complete pathname of the installed file as the 'if' paramter
in the '/etc/printcap' entry for the printer queue(s) for this printer,
and set the 'lp' paramter to the name of the I/O port to which it is
attached.
Writing to -this- standard is a _lot_ of work. And it *is* understandable
that very few printer manufacturers have done so. It is worth noting,
though, that printer manufacturers _have_ done it. Lexmark did it for an
early color ink-jet (the ZX-80), providing a SunOS host-based executable
that provided, self-contained in the executable, a full "Color PostScript
Level 3" 'driver' for that printer.
A _far_simpler_ approach -- which *still* meets the requirements of 'not
disclosing anything proprietary', and writing _one_ driver that works on
all Unix systems -- is to write a 'device-driver' module for GhostScript.
The _single_ source-code does have to be compiled for each supported
CPU architecture, There is a theoretical 'worst case' of needing to
produce as many as three object files ('a.out', ELF, and COFF format)
for a given CPU architecture.
I don't expect this to convince the frothing loon of anything. But it
should demonstrate that his screaming screeds are not based in fact.
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