[comp.sys.mac] Support for Printer Drivers

casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres) (08/24/88)

In article <2414@spray.CalComp.COM> anson@spray.UUCP (Ed Anson) writes:

>                  At the spring developers conference, last April, an
>  Apple representative publicly offered support to printer developers
>  who wanted to develop drivers for their products. That offer was
>  followed up by phone calls and links promising specific
>  support. Then there was a sudden change of policy. NOW apple expressly
>  does not support driver development. The stated reason is that they
>  don't know how to do it.

But what I said remains true:  Apple has never claimed that the support
exists.  And I stand by my original statement, that if you had the document
that you think you want, you would quickly find that it didn't do you much
good.

While I'm here, I want to say that in my last posting I didn't mean to cast
any aspersions on the work of developers who have been brave enough to go
ahead and guess enough things to write printer drivers that work.  I admire
some of those drivers, but all the ones I've seen fail in some way to meet
Apple's standards for integration or device indpendence or MultiFinder
compatibility or user interface or application independence or somthing.

And I don't make any Apple policy, no matter how hard I may try, so I can
neither defend nor criticize current policy in this forum.  I just wanted
to point out that in not supporting printer driver development, Apple is
not misrepresenting anything.  It's just one more kind of code that isn't
in the book, along with MultiFinder internals, how to write your own
QuickDraw or your own file system or your own Event Manager, and many others.

David Casseres