As far as I can tell, its possible to make a C350 speak Postscript if you get an extra controller that costs as much again as the rest of the machine. Otherwise, no.
Which means that the only way to get a Mac to print to it is "Generic PCL Driver Version X", where "5" produced the best values for X for me and even then didn't do colour or duplexing.
On a more general note, why are there more standardized, reliable methods for rendering a three-dimensional, texture-mapped, bumpmapped object into virtual spaces across every major platform than there are for rendering a two-dimensional image onto a piece of paper?
If there are a whole bunch of different ways of doing it, that's not really "standardized", is it? You'd want a single functioning way of having computers and printers talk to each other that all printers and all computers are familiar with, so that any computer can readily talk to any printer. And to a large extent that is what exists.
There are numerous standards for doing it across platforms. Standard != monolithic. OpenGL being the most popular, but not the only one.
I'm only familiar with printers on the consumer-grade level. PCL sounds like an excellent thing. Can one buy a PCL-compliant printer and does not need massive, bloated printer drivers which are inseparable from bundled crapware?
On windows, 99% of printers *have* drivers without the crapware, but the manufacturer does not make it easy to get. And MFD features simply don't work without the crapware, most of the time.
On linux, you can speak pidgin printerese to just about anything, and a great effort has been put forward to add a language pack for, well, everything.
On a mac, you should probably share the printer from a Windows or Linux machine, because if it doesn't run Bonjour natively you're going to have a nightmarish time.
The 99% figure seems high to me. I found a driver-only bundle for my HP all-in-one, but wasn't able to find the same for my friends' two other machines. (For them, I was able to un-install some of the crapware after the fact, but not all of it).
Even then, driver-only install for my printer was of size comparable to the driver-only bundle for my video card. That seems strange, considering one has to deal with an extra dimension, animation and a bunch of other factors that the thing putting ink on a page doesn't have to deal with.
It's possible my sample size is skewed - I don't *deal* with the USB-only one-user shitboxes from Staples that I see most of the installer-complaints about.
Almost anything with an integrated NIC will have a non-crappy driver-files-only setup, and those are what I mostly touch.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 04:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 04:55 am (UTC)(There seems to be a dearth of information about Mac OS and PCL out there.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 09:41 am (UTC)Which means that the only way to get a Mac to print to it is "Generic PCL Driver Version X", where "5" produced the best values for X for me and even then didn't do colour or duplexing.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 06:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 11:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 11:38 pm (UTC)Unless the computer is a Mac.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-11 08:45 pm (UTC)I'm only familiar with printers on the consumer-grade level. PCL sounds like an excellent thing. Can one buy a PCL-compliant printer and does not need massive, bloated printer drivers which are inseparable from bundled crapware?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-11 11:19 pm (UTC)On linux, you can speak pidgin printerese to just about anything, and a great effort has been put forward to add a language pack for, well, everything.
On a mac, you should probably share the printer from a Windows or Linux machine, because if it doesn't run Bonjour natively you're going to have a nightmarish time.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-13 01:58 pm (UTC)Even then, driver-only install for my printer was of size comparable to the driver-only bundle for my video card. That seems strange, considering one has to deal with an extra dimension, animation and a bunch of other factors that the thing putting ink on a page doesn't have to deal with.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-13 02:40 pm (UTC)Almost anything with an integrated NIC will have a non-crappy driver-files-only setup, and those are what I mostly touch.
(Now I'm curious: What's your model?)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-11 04:50 pm (UTC)But seriously I'm having a hell of a time getting two different programs to read FBX the same way so it's not that much better.