Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ll-xn!husc6!bloom-beacon!apple!casseres
From: casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Microsoft cuts corners, actually
Message-ID: <15952@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 22 Aug 88 19:04:58 GMT
References: <429@rose3.rosemount.com> <870217@hpcilzb.HP.COM> <9867@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <9872@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <9874@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <9877@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Reply-To: casseres@apple.com.UUCP (David Casseres)
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 24

In article <9877@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) writes:

>                                       *PRINTING*  Who outside of Apple
>(or inside) has any idea how printing works?  I have written a printer
>driver for the Mac, and sold an article to MacTutor about it (which
>they were very happy to buy).  I don't have the foggiest if half the
>code in my driver is "compatible" or not, and no way to find out
>except by waiting for the System release that breaks it.  (That's why
>it's free.)  Required documentation for writing the driver was the
>PHONEBOOK edition of IM, and two Tech Notes.  They ain't sayin'
>nuthin' about printing.

Your last sentence says it all:  Apple has never claimed to be offering
any support to people who want to write printer drivers.  Printer drivers
that fully support our standards, are backward-compatible with existing
applications, fully support the device-independent printing model, and
have a good chance of being forward-compatible are very hard to write.
About half a dozen people inside Apple know how to do it, and even the best
of them couldn't do it without inside access to the System programmers and
to the other people writing Apple printer drivers.  A document that really
explained how to do the job would be very large, everybody would REALLY
hate what it told you to do, and it would probably be obsolete by the
time it became available.

David Casseres