[lsb-discuss] Coder for a new driver?

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 03:03:20PM +0000, Robert Pawlowicz wrote:
> I meant driver in the correct meaning of the word. I want to be able to
> print PDF documents on the printer over a LAN.
> 
> I found this mailing list via the Linux Printing site. I've taken up the
> previous suggestion about contacting Greg KH free driver writing
> service, but will also test any existing drivers once the test printer
> arrives, however I've already been told by the suppliers that no such
> driver exists... we'll see.

Greg's teams are mainly involved with the kernel-side issue of getting
bytes from the kernel to the device.  My experience with printers is
that most of the time little to no kernel work is necessary.  The hard
part is formatting the byte stream into whatever low-level format is
required by the printer --- and that's not done in the Kernel and
isn't considered a device driver by Linux kernel developers.  

I would be surprised if the Zebra printer actually requires a hardware
specific kernel-side driver.  Maybe a USB device number needs to be
added to a file or a table for a device specific quirk, but most of
the time, USB printers don't need any special kernel support.

Good luck,

						- Ted

P.S.  Did you try http://forums.openprinting.org?  That's the site
recommended by the Linux OpenPrinting site for help.  There will be
far more printer experts there than at this mailing list.