Opinions about univesal printer driver

[Huw D M Davies]

On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 02:31:38AM +0200, Ilja Kamps wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 02:17:41AM +0200, m.kostrzewa at pentacomp.com.pl wrote:
> > I'm trying to imagine a method for using windows printer drivers under 
> > linux. As far as I know, from gdi's point of view it works like:
> > LoadLibrary(driver) (drv appears to be a dll),
> > some of 24 DDI functions which every printer driver should contain, 
> > Initialization = Enable, Control, next goes drawing functions like Output, 
> > Pixel. It doesn't have to access paralell ports - it can write to file 
> > (when printing under Windows you have this little checkbox, and gdi 
> > initializes driver telling this filename I think). Content of this file can 
> > be directly sent to port in Linux's way. I know that's not that simple, but 
> > I'm very interested in your opinions: what do you think about it having 
> > experience in dlling under linux :-) ? I know that wine doesn't run 
> > drivers, but it can run win dlls. Is it possible at all? Or this is just a 
> > linux-supports-every-printer dream? Perhaps someone tried this already? 
> >
> Well, Wine once supported Windows printer drivers, (I belive the support got 
> broken in early 2001), but based on that you should be able to resurrect support 
> without too much trouble.

There's some support for 16 bit printer drivers (note the drivers for
win9x are 16 bit).  The code is in dlls/gdi/win16drv/ but as you say
this may well be broken at the moment.

Huw.
-- 
Huw Davies
huw at codeweavers.com