Tim:
I have a HP printer in that boat. It proudly proclaims direct PDF printing (send it a PDF file, or plug a USB into the front with a PDF on it). But after a lot of digging around you find that it only supports a special PDF created by their driver program, no other PDF files are supported.
Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
So Non-Portable Document Format ...
The ironies of commercial decisions...
I suspect they went with something like that because the infrastructure was there for them to start with (creating a standalone file for sneakernet, people are used to the idea of a print to PDF file option, and they may have used the existing code to start from). But I can't imagine why they didn't just go with standard PDF files, perhaps some Adobe fees they didn't want to pay.
I recall years ago one of the print to file options in programs being print to a PostScript file. I don't see that any more.