[LorenDB]

I've never understood why nobody ever created a universal standard for talking to printers over any connection (USB or Wi-Fi). We've standardized most other USB peripherals, from mice to webcams to thumb drives, so why can't we standardize printers to require zero drivers?

As a Linux user, I benefit from CUPS for printing, but I still have occasion to manage printers on Windows, and it's a nightmare.

[mannyv]

Some vendors care about lock-in, some don't.

For laser printers pcl/ipp is pretty standard afaik. For inkjets it's different because it's consumer hardware and there's no driver.

Airprint is actually surprisingly standard now. There's even feature discovery.

[gorkish]

I mean they did… a number of times. Current CUPS and MacOS prefer to use IPP when supported.

However as a de facto standard you can dump postscript or pcl to port 9100 and most good printers will happily oblige you. The problem AirPrint endeavored to solve was already solved when it came along, IMO. Its current problems are solely related to it unnecessarily being a walled garden.

However in the endless quest to make consumer goods cheaper most inexpensive printers that people purchase now interpret everything on the host and the printer interface is low level machine control, as in “move motor” type commands.

Lantronix and others have produced small “print server” gateway devices in the past that run cups and support AirPrint and talk directly to a downstream “dumb” printer.