Its not like a laser printer can really print line by line though.

ssl-3 · on Oct 4, 2024

An old HP laser printer will buffer plain text line-by-line, and will print a page once the last line is buffered.

That buffer could have several random programs' outputs in it, all just dumped as simply as possible to /dev/lp0 (or lpt1 or whatever), and it works.

A LaserWriter can't do these things.

tonyedgecombe · on Oct 4, 2024

>will print a page once the last line is buffered.

You could usually set a timeout to eject the page if no data had been received for a while.

>A LaserWriter can't do these things.

The LaserWriter could emulate a Diablo printer which would do the same thing. It wouldn't accept PostScript then though.