Berg, Ivan Michael (Ivan) is having quality problems with XP and his Canon BJ 200, but not with Fedora. I wrote: > Turning the print job into whatever the printer understands is done by > the computer that wants to print. So XP will be doing the GDI -> BJ200, > while Fedora will be doing the whatever -> Postscript -> BJ200. Ivan replied: > Yea, makes sense, would there be something different in the way > postscript send it's job to the printer vs GDI? Well, they'll be completely different programs... I asked: > Does the printer emulate anything else? How about trying a BJ-100 > driver? Ivan replied: > No, it's a straight and true BJ200 that has been working for 8+ years. > Sometimes with this type of problem caused by "fuzz" in the printer. But > this has been cleaned, and why would FC2 print better?? Um. Printers of that era were designed for use with multiple operating systems. Those were the days of Amigas, STs, Psion organisers, NeXT, and all sorts of weird, wonderful, and wacky things. Definitely in the latter category was MS-DOS, an "operating system" so retarded that it had no concept of printers beyond "shove that ASCII to a printer port...", so each application had to supply its own drivers. So printer manufacturers couldn't rely on just providing Windows drivers. Instead, they provided specialised drivers (if you were lucky) for a selection of apps and OSes, and provided compatibility modes in which the printer looked like an existing, common printer. Likewise, manufacturers of printing systems tended to provide drivers for those standard printers, and hoped that other printers would be compatible. The usual list included IBM Proprinters, Epson Esc/2, HP PCL devices, Postscript, and early Canons. So I suspect that the BJ200 would be compatible with one of its predecessors. Unfortunately, Google doesn't seem to return the right sort of technical data, so I can't check this. Do you have a manual around? James. -- E-mail address: james | When the revolution comes, we'll need a longer wall. @westexe.demon.co.uk | -- Tom De Mulder
