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#11
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printer driver driver
micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:26:23 -0500, Tony lizandtony at orcon dot net dot nz wrote: micky wrote: Seems to me, someone should be able to write a printer driver driver, that will take the output from XP, 7, 8, or 10 and convert it to what the output from win98 or XP would look like, to be used as input for old printers. So that old printers -- and other accessories -- could be used with new versions of windows. So it woudln't have to be printer-specific, If this won't work, how come? It annoys me that not only do they want us to buy a new version of Windows, which often means a new computer, but then we have to buy new printers, etc. Good idea. Please be aware that when the internals of the OS are upgraded it may be impossible to remain compatible with older printer drivers without compromising the new OS release. Not without compromisiing some of the new print features**, you mean, right? Probably both. For example the interface had to change with improvements like USB2 and 3 upgrades which required new USB drivers which have to interface with the OS, it is a very complex environment. There are several examples of manufacturers not properly implementing USB3 (they don't always work with USB2 connections because of enumeration issues). Features most people never use, I'll bet. The 82 or so letters, numbers. and basic punctuation marks are the same from one OS to another, I woudl think, but if they're not, it would be easy enough to map one OS to another. Plus another 10 or so printer control characters. 99.99% of everything I write doesn't use more than that. Then there is graphics. I don't know how that is controlled, but mapping one output to the other is bound to be possible. All has to be compatible. Graphical interfaces are very complex because there are different ways of providing graphical printing, depending on the type of printer (there are as you know several diffferent technologies) the driver has to hndle that which is why the printer manufacturer needs to provide the driver. **And are they still coming out with new print features? What is left to have? Maybe 3-D or holograms or human bladder printing, but I'll never want to use those. Well, 3D is in its infancy, who knows what will happen but once more the OS provides the rules for interfacing and the driver needs to meet those rules. I know that as new OSs are produced there have been changes to the interface, but you would expect that as things improve, right? Microsoft does not write the printer drivers anyway, the printer manufacturer provides them. Tony I assume that means that MS releases the format of the output to the driver, of all the MS programs. Well, iiuc not the MS programs but the OS itself determines the output to the printer, including what is generated by non-MS programs. And it's uniform, no matter what program is doing the printing, right? Otherwise the driver would have to have spearate sections for different programs that print. Yes Microsoft publishes a driver interface specification (not sure what they call it any more) and the printer manufacturers have to comply or risk issues with their customers. Software suppliers have to comply with the interface also so that they can print, in many cases they simply call the OS print routines but in some cases they cannot do that and write their own routines which must comply with the interface. Your proposition is probably possible, I suspect it is more complex than it appears at first glance and who will do it? It needs to be profitable or open source! Tony |
#12
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printer driver driver
In message , micky
writes: [things that let old hardware run under new versions of Windows] I've never seen what I'm talking about on the web. not even one, let alone the "some" that you talk about below. [] I've seen one for scanners; unfortunately it isn't free, and costs about the same as a cheap scanner. This is sad, as it's a good product; it's just made by a small company (Australian, I think) who aren't big enough to be able to offer it at a lower price. (There is a free "evaluation" version, but that puts overprinting on the result - it's intended for you to see if your scanner works with it.) IIRR, it's called VueScan. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf She's showing her age a little bit. I always say she doesn't have teething troubles, she has denture troubles! - Timothy West (on their narrowboat!), RT 2014-March |
#13
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printer driver driver
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 17:06:45
-0500, Tony lizandtony at orcon dot net dot nz wrote: micky wrote: In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:26:23 -0500, Tony lizandtony at orcon dot net dot nz wrote: micky wrote: Seems to me, someone should be able to write a printer driver driver, that will take the output from XP, 7, 8, or 10 and convert it to what the output from win98 or XP would look like, to be used as input for old printers. So that old printers -- and other accessories -- could be used with new versions of windows. So it woudln't have to be printer-specific, If this won't work, how come? It annoys me that not only do they want us to buy a new version of Windows, which often means a new computer, but then we have to buy new printers, etc. Good idea. Please be aware that when the internals of the OS are upgraded it may be impossible to remain compatible with older printer drivers without compromising the new OS release. Not without compromisiing some of the new print features**, you mean, right? Probably both. For example the interface had to change with improvements like USB2 and 3 upgrades which required new USB drivers which have to interface with the OS, it is a very complex environment. There are several examples of manufacturers not properly implementing USB3 (they don't always work with USB2 connections because of enumeration issues). Features most people never use, I'll bet. The 82 or so letters, numbers. and basic punctuation marks are the same from one OS to another, I woudl think, but if they're not, it would be easy enough to map one OS to another. Plus another 10 or so printer control characters. 99.99% of everything I write doesn't use more than that. Then there is graphics. I don't know how that is controlled, but mapping one output to the other is bound to be possible. All has to be compatible. Graphical interfaces are very complex because there are different ways of providing graphical printing, depending on the type of printer (there are as you know several diffferent technologies) the driver has to hndle that which is why the printer manufacturer needs to provide the driver. **And are they still coming out with new print features? What is left to have? Maybe 3-D or holograms or human bladder printing, but I'll never want to use those. Well, 3D is in its infancy, who knows what will happen but once more the OS provides the rules for interfacing and the driver needs to meet those rules. I know that as new OSs are produced there have been changes to the interface, but you would expect that as things improve, right? Microsoft does not write the printer drivers anyway, the printer manufacturer provides them. Tony I assume that means that MS releases the format of the output to the driver, of all the MS programs. Well, iiuc not the MS programs but the OS itself determines the output to the printer, including what is generated by non-MS programs. And it's uniform, no matter what program is doing the printing, right? Otherwise the driver would have to have spearate sections for different programs that print. Yes Microsoft publishes a driver interface specification (not sure what they call it any more) and the printer manufacturers have to comply or risk issues with their customers. Software suppliers have to comply with the interface also so that they can print, in many cases they simply call the OS print routines but in some cases they cannot do that and write their own routines which must comply with the interface. Your proposition is probably possible, I suspect it is more complex than it appears at first glance and who will do it? It needs to be profitable or open source! I thought about it in the car today and I don't think it could be profitable, unless it was so good the printer companies were willing to pay for a license and so not have to write their own drivers for later OSe. They would of course still have to write the first driver. But still this idea seems totally out of the question And I'm not able to do it now. Not because of time but competence. I had another idea about 8 years ago that I was not competent to do, and I offerred the idea to a group of people who should have wanted it as much as I did, and everyone who commented said they saw no need for it. I don't know why they had so little foresight. Almost 5 years went by and maybe doing it was in the back of my mind, but one day I thought I knew how to do it. I got started and had difficulties with things that should have been easy, but that didn't bother me too much. It just meant a little extra time. And I was looking into registering a domain and getting webspace to host it, and then I thought to, again, see if it existed. I'd looked when I first had the idea and no one had, but this time it was there. So I didnt' get the fun of doing or the status of having done it, but I also don't have to do the maintenance, which might be 40 hours a year (of actual work, not counting all the inevitable other time spent) , or pay the cost, which might be $150 a year or more. All in all I'm very glad someone else did it. . Actually, several people I think, with more contacts than I have, to collect money and share the work. Maybe in 5 years I'll decide I can do this. Until then, anyone can have my idea. Tony |
#14
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printer driver driver
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 23:26:22
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , micky writes: [things that let old hardware run under new versions of Windows] I've never seen what I'm talking about on the web. not even one, let alone the "some" that you talk about below. [] I've seen one for scanners; unfortunately it isn't free, and costs about the same as a cheap scanner. This is sad, as it's a good product; it's just made by a small company (Australian, I think) who aren't big enough to be able to offer it at a lower price. (There is a free "evaluation" version, but that puts overprinting on the result - it's intended for you to see if your scanner works with it.) IIRR, it's called VueScan. Yeah, that's it. https://www.hamrick.com/reg.html 30 or 80 dollars. American dollars afaict. For the extra money you get flim and slide scanning, OCR of text, and unnamed extra features. I would think some people would have OCR already, even maybe from the original ... hmm. This isn't exactly what I had in mind, I think. It says it replaces the software. I don't know i that makes it more expensive or less. But still, they seem to have done it for scanners, which I was also interested in. . There are a lot more printers and there's a a lot more printing being done. Maybe greater volume would allow a lower price, although I can see that printing is a lot more complicated than scanning. He says 400,000 people use vuescan. |
#15
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printer driver driver
micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 23:26:22 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , micky writes: [things that let old hardware run under new versions of Windows] I've never seen what I'm talking about on the web. not even one, let alone the "some" that you talk about below. [] I've seen one for scanners; unfortunately it isn't free, and costs about the same as a cheap scanner. This is sad, as it's a good product; it's just made by a small company (Australian, I think) who aren't big enough to be able to offer it at a lower price. (There is a free "evaluation" version, but that puts overprinting on the result - it's intended for you to see if your scanner works with it.) IIRR, it's called VueScan. Yeah, that's it. https://www.hamrick.com/reg.html 30 or 80 dollars. American dollars afaict. For the extra money you get flim and slide scanning, OCR of text, and unnamed extra features. I would think some people would have OCR already, even maybe from the original ... hmm. This isn't exactly what I had in mind, I think. It says it replaces the software. I don't know i that makes it more expensive or less. But still, they seem to have done it for scanners, which I was also interested in. . There are a lot more printers and there's a a lot more printing being done. Maybe greater volume would allow a lower price, although I can see that printing is a lot more complicated than scanning. He says 400,000 people use vuescan. There is a "sort" of standard for scanning called TWAIN which if I recall correctly stands for Technology Without An Interesting Name! That probably makes it a little easier for applications like Vue Scan although I don't know if they use TWAIN. There is nothing similar for printers so far as I know. Tony |
#16
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printer driver driver
micky writes:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 23:26:22 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , micky writes: [things that let old hardware run under new versions of Windows] I've never seen what I'm talking about on the web. not even one, let alone the "some" that you talk about below. [] I've seen one for scanners; unfortunately it isn't free, and costs about the same as a cheap scanner. This is sad, as it's a good product; it's just made by a small company (Australian, I think) who aren't big enough to be able to offer it at a lower price. (There is a free "evaluation" version, but that puts overprinting on the result - it's intended for you to see if your scanner works with it.) /../ Yeah, that's it. https://www.hamrick.com/reg.html 30 or 80 dollars. American dollars afaict. For the extra money you get flim and slide scanning, OCR of text, and unnamed extra features. /../ But still, they seem to have done it for scanners, which I was also interested in. . There are a lot more printers and there's a a lot more printing being done. Maybe greater volume would allow a lower price, although I can see that printing is a lot more complicated than scanning. Hi Mick, VueScan is good stuff, really! I can recommend it even though I don't use it. Those people work hard to reverse-engineer the scanning protocols and idiosyncracies of individual scanners. Under linux and MacOSX we have the SANE project for scanning, and the gutenprint project for printing. Both provide back-ends, that is, drivers, for the hardware. Look them up online, both are free software, and continuously improving and keeping up with the latest devices, while adding older one as well, best of both worlds. The SANE project to which I contributed in the past mostly for Canon devices, has most of the capabilities of VueScan, but OCR is not part of the project, and unfortunately also still lacking infra-red dust removal capability for those devices that have it physically (the new PIE backend has it, so in future other back-ends may be able to implement such capability also). The gutenprint project, to which I contribute as maintainer of the Canon backend, offers varied support for a host of printers from many different manufacturers, mostly inkjets, and dye-sublimation devices. Since printers use different print languages and data formats, even a back-end for one manufacturer has tons of variations to accommodate differences. And then occasionally one needs to create a new back-end entirely. Gutenprint does well for standard text and graphics printing, but has no calibration for photo printing for different media and resolutions, so it is up to the user to adjust individual ink densities and so on for best performance. This is an area where the project could improve, but also impossible without access to the printer by developers, or some automated way for users to do themselves. Gutenprint tries to handle all linux and MacOSX versions as far back as possible, but because of the idiosyncracies of MacOSX, support for 10.2, then 10.3 and 10.4, and finally 10.5 had to be dropped, and the latest version requires 10.6 or later. Regards, Gernot Hassenpflug -- NNTP on Emacs 24.3 from Windows 7 |
#17
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printer driver driver
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 19 Aug 2015 17:32:31
+0900, Gernot Hassenpflug wrote: micky writes: In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 23:26:22 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , micky writes: [things that let old hardware run under new versions of Windows] I've never seen what I'm talking about on the web. not even one, let alone the "some" that you talk about below. [] I've seen one for scanners; unfortunately it isn't free, and costs about the same as a cheap scanner. This is sad, as it's a good product; it's just made by a small company (Australian, I think) who aren't big enough to be able to offer it at a lower price. (There is a free "evaluation" version, but that puts overprinting on the result - it's intended for you to see if your scanner works with it.) /../ Yeah, that's it. https://www.hamrick.com/reg.html 30 or 80 dollars. American dollars afaict. For the extra money you get flim and slide scanning, OCR of text, and unnamed extra features. /../ But still, they seem to have done it for scanners, which I was also interested in. . There are a lot more printers and there's a a lot more printing being done. Maybe greater volume would allow a lower price, although I can see that printing is a lot more complicated than scanning. Hi Mick, VueScan is good stuff, really! I can recommend it even though I don't use it. Those people work hard to reverse-engineer the scanning protocols and idiosyncracies of individual scanners. Under linux and MacOSX we have the SANE project for scanning, and the gutenprint project for printing. Both provide back-ends, that is, drivers, for the hardware. Look them up online, both are free software, and continuously improving and keeping up with the latest devices, while adding older one as well, best of both worlds. Coincidentally -- well not really because I think my excess hardware from win98 days is what made me think abou this in the first place -- but anyhow, yesterday I listed a flatbed scanner from win98 days on Freecycle, and within an hour I got someone who said she's interested. The "ad" said that it only works with a parallel port but I said some (PCI) are as low as $5.25 and I offered to help install it, because this scanner is new in the box and I really don't want to see it get scrapped without ever being used. Anyhow, though this one only has a parallel port, it does have drivers for up to win7. Interesting, huh? I willl tell her or whoever takes it about the software above, for when they upgrade beyond 7. The SANE project to which I contributed in the past mostly for Canon devices, has most of the capabilities of VueScan, but OCR is not part of the project, Can't one use separate OCR software? (I've always wanted to OCR something but in fact I never have a need for it.) and unfortunately also still lacking infra-red dust removal capability for those devices that have it physically (the new PIE backend has it, so in future other back-ends may be able to implement such capability also). The gutenprint project, to which I contribute as maintainer of the Canon backend, offers varied support for a host of printers from many different manufacturers, mostly inkjets, and dye-sublimation devices. Since printers use different print languages and data formats, even a back-end for one manufacturer has tons of variations to accommodate differences. And then occasionally one needs to create a new back-end entirely. Gutenprint does well for standard text and graphics printing, but has no calibration for photo printing for different media and resolutions, so it is up to the user to adjust individual ink densities and so on for best performance. This is an area where the project could improve, but also impossible without access to the printer by developers, or some automated way for users to do themselves. Gutenprint tries to handle all linux and MacOSX versions as far back as possible, but because of the idiosyncracies of MacOSX, support for 10.2, then 10.3 and 10.4, and finally 10.5 had to be dropped, and the latest version requires 10.6 or later. Well I hope the old versions are still available, and even my friend has upgraded to 10.6, for other reasons. Regards, Gernot Hassenpflug |
#18
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printer driver driver
On 18/08/2015 17:43, Good Guy wrote:
On 18/08/2015 13:06, micky wrote: Seems to me, someone should be able to write a printer driver driver, that will take the output from XP, 7, 8, or 10 and convert it to what the output from win98 or XP would look like, to be used as input for old printers. So that old printers -- and other accessories -- could be used with new versions of windows. So it woudln't have to be printer-specific, If this won't work, how come? It annoys me that not only do they want us to buy a new version of Windows, which often means a new computer, but then we have to buy new printers, etc. Of course there are people writing drivers for old printers for new OS. The only problem is that they have over-advertised themselves and so people are wary of them. They stick their Ad in almost anything, even in articles when you focus on a particular word, something pops up. People have said enough is enough and so they just ignore them. Do a search and you will find lots of them but be careful about them. Some are good and some are pure evil. they will take you and your bank to cleaners. Interesting thought, but I'm still using a printer that I bought in the middle of Windows 98. Works fine in 8.1, and even behaved under 10, though I upgraded back to 8.1 pretty quickly (another story). It's HP Deskjet3845 |
#19
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printer driver driver
In message , Gernot Hassenpflug
writes: [] VueScan is good stuff, really! I can recommend it even though I don't use it. Those people work hard to reverse-engineer the scanning protocols and idiosyncracies of individual scanners. Under linux and MacOSX we have the SANE project for scanning, and the gutenprint project for printing. Both provide back-ends, that is, drivers, for the hardware. Look them up online, both are free software, and continuously improving and keeping up with the latest devices, while adding older one as well, best of both worlds. [] Regards, Gernot Hassenpflug So what chance (minimal I suspect since Windows and Linux folk on the whole aren't too fond of each other) of someone writing a TWAIN-to-SANE, er, driver (translator, whatever), and a Windows driver for *the* gutenprint "printer" (not unlike the PDF "printer"s)? -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Radio 4 is the civilising influence in this country ... I think it is the most important institution in this country. - John Humphrys, Radio Times 7-13/06/2003 |
#20
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printer driver driver
In message , micky
writes: In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 19 Aug 2015 17:32:31 +0900, Gernot Hassenpflug wrote: [] The SANE project to which I contributed in the past mostly for Canon devices, has most of the capabilities of VueScan, but OCR is not part of the project, Can't one use separate OCR software? [] Yes; I get depressed (or used to) at how many people think OCR is a function of the scanner. It isn't. Most OCR software (all that I've ever seen) can take image files as input (albeit sometimes limited to only the common-with-scanner formats, such as TIFF and PDF), as well as directly "driving" a scanner. Certainly Omnipage, Abbyy (sp?), and PagePlus (I think) can. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Radio 4 is the civilising influence in this country ... I think it is the most important institution in this country. - John Humphrys, Radio Times 7-13/06/2003 |
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