But Linux hackers are pretty studly and c00l d00dz. Why won they support WinPrinters?
There are two major problems that strongly discourage WinPrinter support. To explain this requires explaining a few things about WinPrinters and the architecture of printing under Microsoft Windows. Be aware that WinPrinters are not a single sort of printer where there would be a single printer driver. WinPrinters assume a computer system architecture where the critical design point is the Windows “GDI” API. GDI is the programming interface Microsoft uses to render graphics for onscreen presentation. Thus far, this is (arguably) a “good” thing. If you want to print based on “What You See Is What You Get,” then it is perfectly sensible to capture the information at that point and pass it, in that form, to the printing subsystem.
