Printing with Personal Computers

Early personal computers, such as the ones from IBM, and printers only handled text. So they worked in a fashion similar to the UNIX mainframes of that time. Each application came with its own code to handle text-based printing to popular printers. Most of those applications are shipped with modules that help users print to their specific printers.

As the technology improved, printers began to support graphics, so applications had to adapt support the expanded printer features. The complexity of the software used to communicate with printers soon began to rival the applications themselves, and it wasn't long before that these "printer drivers" were an industry of their own. Unfortunately, a printer driver for one application rarely worked with another, so the applications had to adapt support the expanded printer features.

Apple's release of the Macintosh computer changed the manner in which printing was done on the personal computer. Designed from the beginning to be a desktop publishing system, the Macintosh abstracted the printing interface from the application. Applications only had to tell the printing system where and what to print, and the printing system would translate that request into the desired output on the selected printer. Printer drivers were provided with the Mac OS or with the printer you purchased for your computer. The same driver supported all Mac OS applications. Arguably, the Mac OS has dominated desktop publishing since its inception. To this day, a large number of printing shops use the Mac OS for their work.

Microsoft's first Windows operating environment duplicated this paradigm. The printing and information display systems are nothing alike, technically. However, to an end user, they seem to work similarly. Applications for these operating systems were able to produce professional-quality output with a generic printing interface. Yet until recently, UNIX only had a print file spooling system.