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Comment by lakpan | Hacker News Reader

I wish I knew anything about printing, but why can’t my computer just send a PDF to the printer and have it deal with the details itself? I don’t quite understand the need for the computer to have to get into the nitty gritty other than just sending the source and a JSON. Printers nowadays can handle the printing autonomously (obviously, since they can print via WiFi/bluetooth/pendrive since 2005)

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You need the user to select paper trays, simplex or duplex, etc. For bigger devices that might include document finishing options. Label printers might have a guillotine. Print/release where you need a pin at the printer to release the document are becoming more prevalent.

All this requires some interaction with the user. IPP Everywhere covers a lot but I'm guessing there will be some niche requirements that it misses.

This happens at a different layer than the printer driver; you just need to modify the postscript.

Paper trays, duplex, duplex with tumble, and cutting are specifiable in postscript; this is `setpagedevice`. Even things like custom stapler options (staple first two pages, etc) can be specified. See something like https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/bpp01888 for docs

As I said IPP Everywhere covers a lot but there will always be requirements that haven't been considered.

Business laserprinters were always like that in regards to Postscript, followed by PDF, assuming your wallet is confortable with it.

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