radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) (04/20/87)
In article <6014@dartvax.UUCP>, earleh@dartvax.UUCP writes: > Printer drivers for standard > printers cost from $100 to $400, and are well worth it, considering > the complexity of the code involved. Basically, the poor programmer > has to rewrite QuickDraw, the Macintosh graphics package, for each > printer supported by the printer driver. In addition, the information > needed to do this has been removed from the new editions of Inside > Macintosh... Yeah, it's horrible. And what's more, it's COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY! To support screen dumping, a printer driver currently has to implement a capability to print a bit map. Apple could easily write a "generic" printer driver that uses this driver request to do everything else. Supporting a new printer would then require about a page of code. Anyone at Apple listening? Or does Apple make lots of money off of Imagewriter sales? Radford Neal PS: Actually, things are really complicated. You don't have to rewrite quickdraw if you just want to print at 72 dots/inch. If you want to use 144 dots/inch, you sort of have to rewrite quickdraw - you have to intercept all the calls, scale the parameters, and then re-issue the modified request. Except that you can't easily scale regions or pictures without knowing the internal structure... Bleach.