[teddyh]

> I just want to pass the printer a file that represents a document and let it handle things for me. Some kind of standard format […]

…like a bitmap? Turning documents into bitmaps is easy to do in the computer now. We’re a long way from the time when (due to limits on memory, processing, and bandwidth) you had to encode your document into a complicated command language which you could send to a printer.

> […] the scanner hands me a file in some reasonable format.

Like a bitmap?

I really don’t see how you’re disagreeing with me, here.