[Discuss] Is Sharp AL-1540CS a paperweight on Linux

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Mon, May 05, 2014 at 06:29:17PM -0400, Bill Ricker wrote:
> On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Dan Ritter <dsr at randomstring.org> wrote:
> 
> > It's a GDI printer: it relies on Windows to produce a rasterized
> > image for it to print. It won't work.
> >
> 
> ?So GDI-printer is the printer-equivalent of a WinModem ? ?

Yes. GDI is the API that Windows applications use to draw on a screen
or a sheet of paper without knowledge of the underlying hardware.

I can't say that it's an awful idea, just that the execution is layered
cruft. NeXT had Display PostScript; OS X has, essentially, Display PDF
(called Quartz). But the point for MS was to make laser printers cheap by
reducing the cost of the parts which were most likely to fall in price
anyway: the printer's CPU and firmware. (And in some cases, the RAM:
careful synchronization of image data from the Windows box with just
a tiny buffer on the printer's end before the output stage. An 8.5" by
11" by 300 dpi monochrome image fits in a megabyte if you have a little
margin around the edge; early GDI printers had less than that.)

Premature optimization is evil. 

-dsr-