Last night, I tried to set up an older printer to a new laptop, but I kept running into driver issues. I’ve always dealt with that, but never understood what it was and why it was necessary.
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There are standards for a printer like PS (postscript) and if you can have a printer that understands it and you do not need a specific driver. There likely is one but it is there so you can get the specifics parameter that is relevant for the print and to control other features if there are any. There is a PPD (Postscript Printer Description) standard tht descibe the printer, so you can use it and a generic driver for the printer
A PDF file is based on Postscript and in some way the result of you printing a document and postscript code of it is generated. You then store the data in a file so it looks the same on all devices
The problem if you do it that way you need to have the process capability to interpret the postscript in the printer. Because most consumer printer is cheap and manufacturers like to squeeze out any available money they can from them they do it another way. They put as little electronics in the printer as possible. They put the software the generate the control instruction on the computer instead. That is a cheaper way to do it but worse for the user.
If you look at a more expensive printer intended for usage in offices you find lots of printers that understand PS.
I use an “HP Universal Printing PCL 6” driver with an old HP printer from the 90s build for office use. PCL is HP own standard language for printers, it is similar to PS. The printer understands both I just picked PCL
PS has existed in print since 1982 the latest PostScript 3 is from 1997. PCL is from 1984 and the latest PCL 6 is from 1995. So I could use the same drive with any printer regardless of when it was made. The problem with old printers is like their ability to understand TCP/IP or even network in general. There are or at least were printer servers that were just small device with a network interface and the wired interface to connect to the printer.
So there are defacto standards, the problem is they increase the cost of printers a bit so you do not see them in cheap consumer printers. High volume printer for offices generally support the,
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