Surprisingly clear slide deck, dated May 2021, explaining the status of OpenPrinting, CUPS, etc.
https://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/liaison/openprinting/presentations/cups-plenary-may-2021.pdfSlide 15 is what really hits for me:
Deprecations - Printer Drivers
- a Why deprecate printer drivers?
- At least 98% of all printers sold since 2010 support IPP, Apple/PWG
Raster, and JPEG; many (about half) support PDF- Holdouts are industrial label printers and certain vertical market
printers
- PPDs and drivers have been holding us back from offering a better user
experience (ready media, localization, full range of printer options/
values), improved document processing, and improved accounting- PPDs and drivers are a security and distribution nightmare
And, of course, this printer was originally shipped in 2010, so probably before all of this standardization happened.