perl@rdin.UUCP (Robert Perlberg) (12/17/85)
> Is it such a hardship for software companies to either include Tandy >printer drivers in the generic versions or for Tandy to allow some >non-Tandy drivers to be included with the Tandy versions of a program? (I >should stop at this point and thank Quicksoft for including support for >Tandy's DMP series of printers in PC-WRITE.) Maybe UNIX has just spoiled me, but I don't see why the designers of TRSDOS or MS-DOS couldn't have allowed for printer drivers to be part of the operating system so that no program would have to know how to use a certain printer. The communication between the programs and the printer drivers would be via a standard protocol (ala termcap) and all you would need is one driver for your printer and all programs, however obtained, would work with it. Not only would this make things easier for the user, it would relieve developers from having to write a zillion printer drivers when they could be spending that time and effort improving the functionality of the programs. Am I out of line here or what? Robert Perlberg Resource Dynamics Inc. New York {philabs|delftcc}!rdin!perl
sgt@alice.UucP (Steve Tell) (12/30/85)
>Maybe UNIX has just spoiled me, but I don't see why the designers of >TRSDOS or MS-DOS couldn't have allowed for printer drivers to be part >of the operating system so that no program would have to know how to >use a certain printer. The communication between the programs and the >printer drivers would be via a standard protocol (ala termcap) and all >you would need is one driver for your printer and all programs, however >obtained, would work with it. >.... >Am I out of line here or what? The Amiga Does! The standard printer driver accepts one set of escape codes & such, then converts them to whatever type of printer you specified with the "preferences" setup utility.
sob@neuro1.UUCP (Stan Barber) (01/02/86)
Actually, it is possible to design a standard set of printer drivers for
TRSDOS 6 and LDOS 5 that can take a standard set of escape sequences and
do the translation. Both TRSDOS 6 and LDOS 5 have hooks in them to allow
this. Tandy never bothered to approach life in this manner. I am not sure
they would bother now that 8-bit machines are being replaced by MS-DOS
machines.
--
Stan uucp:{ihnp4!shell,rice}!neuro1!sob Opinions expressed
Olan ARPA:sob@rice.arpa here are ONLY mine &
Barber CIS:71565,623 BBS:(713)660-9262 noone else's.