I have too many projects on at the moment. I really need to finish the new version of Innecto. I need to finish MailRaider. I have ports of PetsciiRobots and ChipWits in flight (although lower down the queue) and a list of other projects in various states of completeness. What I don't need is fresh ideas for software that I'll never have time to write. And yet, here we are.
I've heard that some people are trying this vibe coding malarkey, although I guess that that doesn't extend to generating useful ideas for applications. So here's an idea that should be feasible - either hand crafted or vibe crafted. Does anyone want to pick holes in it - or maybe just see if it's feasible?
AirPrint can work with wired as well as wireless networks. Therefore, my thinking goes, it should be possible to write a driver for any ethernet connected Mac to use an AirPrint printer. AirPrint should be a nice choice because it means that you'll have a universal driver that works with many different types of modern printer - albeit that it will be slow because the rendering will have to be done by the Mac. Still, it shouldn't end up being ImageWriter slow!
AirPrint is proprietary - but it seems to just be a proprietary bundling of open source technologies (mDNS, IPP and PWG Raster). The first step, which might be useful in its own right, would be to build libraries for these functions which work on System 6(?) and newer.
Documentation for classic MacOS printer drivers can be found in Inside Macintosh, with sample code on the MPW disc. The CUPS source code (guessing) should contain much of what is required for AirPrint. Now, what objections can people come up with for this idea?
I've heard that some people are trying this vibe coding malarkey, although I guess that that doesn't extend to generating useful ideas for applications. So here's an idea that should be feasible - either hand crafted or vibe crafted. Does anyone want to pick holes in it - or maybe just see if it's feasible?
AirPrint can work with wired as well as wireless networks. Therefore, my thinking goes, it should be possible to write a driver for any ethernet connected Mac to use an AirPrint printer. AirPrint should be a nice choice because it means that you'll have a universal driver that works with many different types of modern printer - albeit that it will be slow because the rendering will have to be done by the Mac. Still, it shouldn't end up being ImageWriter slow!
AirPrint is proprietary - but it seems to just be a proprietary bundling of open source technologies (mDNS, IPP and PWG Raster). The first step, which might be useful in its own right, would be to build libraries for these functions which work on System 6(?) and newer.
Documentation for classic MacOS printer drivers can be found in Inside Macintosh, with sample code on the MPW disc. The CUPS source code (guessing) should contain much of what is required for AirPrint. Now, what objections can people come up with for this idea?
