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2006-08-04
, 13:10
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Posts: 2,853 |
Thanked: 968 times |
Joined on Nov 2005
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#2
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RoI, perhaps. How many people in the tablet user base are in a situation where your solution would be simpler/faster/the only possible one, vs. just transferring the file to a PC and print it from there ? And how many of those (if N>1) will be competent programmers with time to kill and that particular itch to scratch ? :-)
Anything is possible, but there's only six billions of us...
Anything is possible, but there's only six billions of us...
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2006-08-04
, 13:18
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Posts: 1,361 |
Thanked: 115 times |
Joined on Oct 2005
@ Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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#3
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I haven't owned a printer in years so I'm speaking purely from the interest of making the 770 do everything short of wiping my butt on demand...
What's behind 'lp'? Also, what are peoples' intentions? Are you trying to print to some BT laptop printer? USB w/Thoughtfix's power hub? Printing to a router with a printer port? A network printer? A parallel/usb printer on your desktop PC?
What's behind 'lp'? Also, what are peoples' intentions? Are you trying to print to some BT laptop printer? USB w/Thoughtfix's power hub? Printing to a router with a printer port? A network printer? A parallel/usb printer on your desktop PC?
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2006-08-04
, 13:59
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Posts: 3,220 |
Thanked: 326 times |
Joined on Oct 2005
@ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
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#4
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Originally Posted by fpp
That's what I've been doing up til now (Well, not really: after upgrading to ITOS 2006, I couldn't do the Abiword/USB stick with portable Abiword anymore, because I don't have Abiword anymore), but there are many ifs in that scenario that all have to be checked for printing to occurr.RoI, perhaps. How many people in the tablet user base are in a situation where your solution would be simpler/faster/the only possible one, vs. just transferring the file to a PC and print it from there ? And how many of those (if N>1) will be competent programmers with time to kill and that particular itch to scratch ? :-)
Anything is possible, but there's only six billions of us...
Besides, Bluetooth printing is on the 2006 application wishlist (and has been for some time now) and it wasn't me who put it there. The scenario offered there is a very plausible one: the 770 is powerful enough to serve as a mobile sales or order taking unit; being able to produce hardcopy is an important condition for those applications.
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2006-08-04
, 14:03
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Posts: 3,220 |
Thanked: 326 times |
Joined on Oct 2005
@ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
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#5
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Originally Posted by Hedgecore
All of the above, obviously. I haven't owned a printer in years so I'm speaking purely from the interest of making the 770 do everything short of wiping my butt on demand...
What's behind 'lp'? Also, what are peoples' intentions? Are you trying to print to some BT laptop printer? USB w/Thoughtfix's power hub? Printing to a router with a printer port? A network printer? A parallel/usb printer on your desktop PC?
BTW, you forgot one: there are powered USB hubs that have serial and/or parallel ports built in (I have one), although I have no idea what operating systems support them and for obvious reasons (no printing support) I haven't tried it on my 770 yet.
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2006-08-04
, 14:05
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Posts: 2,853 |
Thanked: 968 times |
Joined on Nov 2005
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#6
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If it were to take off as a tool in a professional "vertical" market, then yes we would certainly see some progress in that direction. But I haven't seen any smoke signals, from Nokia or elsewhere, hinting to such a move.
I think the mobile sales scenario is the most credible one. It seems to me that order-taking devices are mostly in-house, linked to a central system that usually does the ticket printing, not the mobile devices themselves (theis is what "Remote User", since vanished from here, wanted to do...).
I think the mobile sales scenario is the most credible one. It seems to me that order-taking devices are mostly in-house, linked to a central system that usually does the ticket printing, not the mobile devices themselves (theis is what "Remote User", since vanished from here, wanted to do...).
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2006-08-04
, 14:54
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Posts: 3,220 |
Thanked: 326 times |
Joined on Oct 2005
@ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
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#7
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Originally Posted by fpp
Maybe I'm just a geek, but ever since I had my first Psion (back in 1995), I've almost constantly had a printer lying in my car, with one of those 12-to-220 volts converter thingies you plug in the cigarette lighter. It used to be a Canon Bubblejet 10-e, but later was "upgraded" to a DJ350 (with a now almost dead battery).If it were to take off as a tool in a professional "vertical" market, then yes we would certainly see some progress in that direction. But I haven't seen any smoke signals, from Nokia or elsewhere, hinting to such a move.
I think the mobile sales scenario is the most credible one. It seems to me that order-taking devices are mostly in-house, linked to a central system that usually does the ticket printing, not the mobile devices themselves (theis is what "Remote User", since vanished from here, wanted to do...).
It has always been so convenient to be able to print off stuff, especially when nobody was expecting you could: a couple of addresses, a copy of a lease contract, a quick resume, a dirty picture (although that only worked with my Series 5mx).
Not everybody out there has gone digital, you know...
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2006-08-04
, 15:00
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Posts: 7 |
Thanked: 1 time |
Joined on Dec 2005
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#8
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Mind you, if you've got a printer that works directly with simple files on USB memory sticks, you can use your USB cable and use your 770's memory card just as easily. I've been having fun using a Samsung MFC to scan directly to the MMC card (say for a stack of documents to PDF) *and* printing back from it.
Not as nice as having a true, flexible printer driver, of course, but surprisingly useful all the same.
Not as nice as having a true, flexible printer driver, of course, but surprisingly useful all the same.
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2006-08-04
, 15:20
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Posts: 1,361 |
Thanked: 115 times |
Joined on Oct 2005
@ Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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#9
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Actually, the POS model doesn't make sense, especially in the scenario outlined by Remote User. You'd tell the server to print. The 770 isn't doing anything aside from having the client tell the server what to do. The 'print' button could play an MP3 on the server side instead, it doesn't matter.
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2006-08-04
, 15:48
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Posts: 2,853 |
Thanked: 968 times |
Joined on Nov 2005
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#10
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Originally Posted by Karel Jansens
I guess :-)Maybe I'm just a geek, but ever since I had my first Psion (back in 1995), I've almost constantly had a printer lying in my car, with one of those 12-to-220 volts converter thingies you plug in the cigarette lighter. It used to be a Canon Bubblejet 10-e, but later was "upgraded" to a DJ350 (with a now almost dead battery).
It has always been so convenient to be able to print off stuff, especially when nobody was expecting you could: a couple of addresses, a copy of a lease contract, a quick resume, a dirty picture (although that only worked with my Series 5mx).
Not everybody out there has gone digital, you know...
I shouldn't even being lurking in this thread anyway, because I'm a print-phobic myself.
I haven't even had a printer at home till very recently, and that's mainly to give out a Pokemon to the kids once in a while (if they've been good :-). I also used to print the transaction result pages from e-commerce sites when ordering online, just in case, but now that I have SCrapbook in Firefox I don't even do that anymore...
The 770 has no printing engine on board, and porting an entire Linux printing system is not only a huge job, it"ll also most likely over-tax the 770's resources.
However, I currently own a Sony Ericsson P910i Symbian smartphone that also doesn't have a printing engine on board. Nevertheless, I can print perfectly acceptable hardcopy from files of several applications on my P910, none of which have a printing menu entry, or were even designed with direct printing in mind.
The magic is performed by Bachmann's PrintBoy (http://www.bachmannsoftware.com/index.htm), which basically takes a file (it knows of several pre-set file types) and converts it to a printer output file (on the P910 only HP printers are supported) that can be sent to an IR or a Bluetooth equipped printer (or, in my case, an ancient DJ350 with a parallel-to-Bluetooth adapter hanging from it).
I'm reasonably certain that Bachmann will never ever port its software to the 770, but the idea is simple enough: all you need (that's sarcasm there, folks!
The beauty is that, if this program is made open and modulary enough, people could add file formats and printer instruction sets to it and users would be able to only load those they need. Who knows, maybe straight networked printing is not beyond the scope of such a program.
So, is this a workable hypothesis, or am I missing something?