Eric Raymond on CUPS usability [2006]

catb.org

3 points·loumf··6 comments

CUPS main developer was hired by Apple in 2007, and the source code was purchased from him, with open source releases ongoing.

That said, there's not much of an improvement to the device configuration, even in OS X, since this came out, if you have to configure the printer manually.

The one big thing that makes OS X printing so easy is that it tends to autodiscover directly connected USB printers, and most recent networked printers support Bonjour which in most cases "just works".

Entry is from 2006.

Why isn't there a generic printer driver, like USB HID or USB Mass Storage?

Winprinters are supposed to be as cheap as possible; adding a layer of abstraction would cost money. OTOH if you buy a printer with PostScript, Ethernet, and Bonjour it will likely just work with a generic driver.

It's not clear that ESR's problems had anything to do with drivers, though.

I updated the title to reflect the year. I posted it because it's related to the Bill Gates e-mail about Windows Usability. It's from a similar perspective -- power user/programmer who has a lot of sway on the platform trying to just use it as a user.

Because cheap printers are dumb, and want a bytestream in the format that they can feed directly to the printer head and electronics.

There are "generic printer drivers" out there, but require more logic on the printer side - Postscript and (to a lesser extent) PCL.

I bet there's a premium market for software and hardware that "just works"...

Nah.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com