Canon printer and TurboPrint

[cpghost]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 06:31:41PM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
> As it has truthfully been mentioned, it would be possible for
> Adobe to release a native version of "Flash" for FreeBSD, even
> if they don't put their sources into BSDL. But they don't want
> to. (It's their right to do so, of course.)

More likely, they simply decided that supporting our OS was not worth
it, because we don't have the user base of Win32 or Linux.

> > Can you say the same thing about a FBSD
> > box? Not even close.
> 
> This is intended to be that way. The printer manufactureres and
> the majority of their customers decided it.

Basically put: you get what you pay for. Classic (non-win) printers do
have circuitry on board to process PCL or PostScript, whereas
el-cheapo win-printers come without this circuitry, and delegate
pagesetting to a software driver. Same for modems vs. win-modems.

Of course, all this is well-known for a long time now. But what's
worrying, is that economics of scale make it increasingly difficult to
locate classic printers (and modems). Fortunatly, they are still being
made here and there, but for how long? What will we do a few years
down the road in an environment where win-${device}s are ubiquitous?

Ultimately, we'll need a full-featured windowsolator a la NDISwrapper
et al., so that we can use the Windows-only drivers natively on
FreeBSD/{i386,amd64}. At least x86-based systems will then work,
although ARM and other platforms would still be left out in the cold.

-cpghost.

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