Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!rutgers!apple!casseres
From: casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Microsoft cuts corners, actuall
Message-ID: <16109@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 25 Aug 88 17:48:41 GMT
References: <870217@hpcilzb.HP.COM> <76000279@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: casseres@apple.com.UUCP (David Casseres)
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 20

In article <76000279@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>It is really too bad that Apple doesn't support printer drivers that
>well, since the Mac O/S architecture supports device-independent
>printing.

Actually, the OS doesn't do anything in particular for device-independent
printing.  The part of the Printing Manager that's in the system is just
a little bit of glue that knows how to pass Printing Manager calls to the
current printer driver.  _Everything_ else is in the driver itself: the
entire user interface (not counting the Chooser but counting the interaction
that appears in the Chooser window), the entire implementation of the
Printing Manager calls, and the entire QuickDraw interception system
(bottlenecks) that causes QuickDraw calls to produce printed images.

It's all in the driver because it's all different for each type of printer;
that's how device independence is achieved, and that's why it's so hard to
develop a driver, and that's why it's so hard to support third parties who
are trying to develop printer drivers.

David Casseres