I cant see any reason for not just using a single protocol, eg ESC/P2, as
all applications with their own printer drivers are likely to support it,
and applications that dont have printer drivers can use it anyway. Some
trickery might have to be performed if the application's output was already
in Ghostscript or Proforma format, but this should be done at the time of
the Open call, eg by appending a suitable letter to the name, eg PFFdp (for Direct Proforma), then let the printer driver job (as explained) take care of the rest.
I agree with this thinking - however, if the PFF device has to handle parameters, why should we not add the possibility of filters being written to handle more than one protocol. Since we will need to provide some means of registering filters, so that we can allow the user to decide which filter they want to use, it is not much more work to store details of which protocols those filters support
-- Rich Mellor RWAP Services 26 Oak Road, Shelfield, Walsall, West Midlands WS4 1RQ
http://www.rwapservices.co.uk/
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