I wish that the CUPS filter language would be made out of something like lua or javascript rather than binary (C) right now.
But I have less than zero hope of that ever happening - both OSX and Linux use CUPS as their printing framework. There is no way, Apple (which basically owns CUPS) will allow Linux to get easy leverage on the superb printer driver ecosystem of the Mac.
Before anybody else comments - printers do work on Linux. But not all features work.
It's been a while, but I thought that CUPS filters were just executables with an input stream and an output stream, so you could write them in whatever you wanted?
correct - but they are non portable. Which means that all the nice features that Mac drivers have are not available on Linux (or the printing is screwed up, etc.).
I wish there was some way to make portable/obfuscated filter drivers, so that vendors could ship them and be usable on all CUPS platforms.
But I have less than zero hope of that ever happening - both OSX and Linux use CUPS as their printing framework. There is no way, Apple (which basically owns CUPS) will allow Linux to get easy leverage on the superb printer driver ecosystem of the Mac.
Before anybody else comments - printers do work on Linux. But not all features work.