What we have here is an enthusiastic hacker wanting to go down the rabbit hole of writing a hardware driver. That's no easy task (like you point out), and answers like this are not helpful at all.
The answer is discouraging and seem to only sow doubt in OPs mind. Let him find out how hard it is. May I remind that this website is called "Hacker News".
Let the voting suggest the venue for the question - it hit the front page of hacker news.
Also, the suggestion to check the arch linux forums was spot on.
I think OPs answer was very helpful and polite.
is it as complicated as calculus? or running your own e-mail server? you're perpetuating the same sentiment. Let the OP figure it out on their own.
Also, this is a relatively new post so maybe relevant information will eventually bubble up. I am starting to see some interesting comments.
"Essentially" is essentially dishonest here. The top post says:
1. HN is not the best venue to get help for this.
2. The answers that you have gotten so far are mostly bad.
3. Printer drivers in Linux almost never involve a custom kernel driver.
4. The Arch Linux forums would be better for this question.
5. Running the 32 bit driver might be easier than writing a 64 bit driver.
6. You might need some packaging help to run the 32 bit driver on a 64 bit system.
7. This would probably only be a worthwhile project only if you were trying to learn, because there are easier ways to get the printer to work.
8. What's coming over the wire will probably be proprietary and obfuscated.
9. Figuring out Canon's format with wireshark output will be very difficult, even for someone with experience at writing drivers.
It also inspired a comment from jrockway that offers additional practical, experienced advice.
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What I can't figure out is what you're offering other than your approval and disapproval of what other people are doing. There's maybe one more comment on this entire thread, recently submitted, that offers more information than the one you're criticizing.
In my humble opinion, way more complicated.
considering that you'd need to know calculus, linear algebra, and other disciplines of math to be able to build some of the image, vectoring, and rastering logic... yes.
> Let the OP figure it out on their own.
the OP is literally soliciting opinions and help
Email servers have whole scripts and instructions and tutorials on how to run them with a completeness that is surely missing from this printer. Calculus has whole libraries full of instructional books.
It’s probably similarly hard to learning bash and Linux and networking and c and writing an email server from scratch with only the SMTP spec in hand or learning all of calculus by being told simply that you can calculate the slope of a line and being handed a slide rule.
(That’s how my professor taught calculus btw. It sucked)
I think it is far worse than that. Printers are commodity products and pretty cheap for what you get new for hundred to a few hundred bucks, which is a hardware and software package that is likely to work flawlessly out of the box and for at least a few years. Labor is not cheap. There was a threshold crossed 20-25 years ago where it no longer made economic sense to repair hardware, and ever since the broken is simply replaced. Even if this printer technically works, if the 32-bit driver is unacceptable, then it classifies. The amount of effort required compared to the value of the product is staggering. Add to this that it already works, albeit with a 32-bit driver, and we're entering the territory of mental illness; perfectionism and obsession are not virtues, they are symptoms.
OP is not a hacker, but rather is attempting to Tom Sawyer a hacker into painting his fence for him. Hackers are notorious for ugly solutions and would not ever whine about using a 32-bit driver, nor do they ask for all the work to be done for them. What possible realized benefit of having a 64-bit driver for this printer is not exactly clear. It has the memory that it has, 128MB, and a driver capable of 4 billion times the address space should make absolutely no difference, because the memory is what it is.
The top reply is apt, and the GP is only encouraging heartache, disappointment and failure. If the OP wants a 64-bit driver, he'll need to find a replacement printer that comes with one. Conversely, he can earn a computer engineering degree and go to work for a few years in the device driver industry to get the experience necessary to approach and solve this tiny problem requiring massive knowledge for pretty much no benefit. I would recommend instead meditating on why it is difficult to impossible to change the nature of something and/or why you shouldn't build your castle in a swamp.[1]