Strydent will not support Mac OS X

[gopher]

I am sorry, but Strydent Software will not be developing a Native OS X
version of PowerPrint. After careful evaluation of numerous factors,
including development effort and market need, the development of a Native OS
X version of PowerPrint is not commercially feasible.

Strydent has been happy to provide the bridge to non-Mac compatible printers
for over 15 years and are pleased to see the huge selection of printers now
available to Mac users.

We still sell and support our OS 9 compatible versions of PowerPrint and
continue to work on new and innovative printing solutions.

That's what their support person sent me. If you feel this is wrong, nicely let their sales department at 1-800-663-6222 know.

Powerprint supports numerous Parallel printers through USB and is the only solution to do so.

 

[oliverlubin]

re: Strydent not supporting X

have you looked into setting up/enabling CUPS with your system?

 

[Nipsy]

...and soon Thursby will quit updating Dave, Watson wil be a PC product, etc.

The reason these people do not want to invest resources it that the products they developed are now part of OSX.

Dave is now redundant. Printer drivers are now redundant. Watson is now Sherlock.

The OS is causing people to abandon development, because the OS does what their product did, often better than their product did it.

Hopefully, these developers will make new, different, and exciting software with their newfound free time.

I feel bad for the guy who wrote Watson though...for Apple to give him a trophy at WWDC, and then steal his work...not cool.

 

[nixd2001]

Originally posted by Nipsy
...

The reason these people do not want to invest resources it that the products they developed are now part of OSX.
...

IMHO (oops, nearly forgot this

It's been the way of the general personal computing industry for the last twenty years that a high proportion of successful third party products (whether hardware or software) gradually migrate towards being supplied by the manufacturer. Products have a natural lifespan and trying to push them beyond this tends to only end in tears (or pink slips).

 

[gopher]

Oh I 've looked into CUPS, but that only supports existing USB drivers. There are no parallel drivers for X last I looked. Strydent would make it possible if they just got enough calls.

 

[balliet]

Do you have an extra pc laying around? Just throw linux or freebsd on any old box, attach the printer, and print over the network. Thats what I do with my LaserJet 4L. Or you could pick up a jetdirect or something similar.

 

[Nipsy]

Originally posted by gopher
Oh I 've looked into CUPS, but that only supports existing USB drivers. There are no parallel drivers for X last I looked. Strydent would make it possible if they just got enough calls.

If you are using USB to Parallel technology, I would think that if the printer has a PPD, and you call it USB via CUPS, you should be set.

Here's a crib-sheet:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020827081141461