Re: printing ascii codes
That sounds pretty compicated.
It isn't.
An OS does an awful lot in sending data to a printer.
The complication is in stuff like stuff like different fonts and graphics.
Printing letters and numbers using the printers character set just
requires sending ascii characters to it in most cases.
Dot matrix printers buffer one line of text. It will print the entire
line in one go when it has received a full line or it is sent line-feed
and carridge-return characters.
Other printers will print a whole page at once. Sending ascii character
0x0c will make it print the page and start on the next sheet of paper.
Most printers with a parallel interface will print text when sent ascii
codes. There are a few printers around which are "GDI printers" aka
"winprinters". The pinter is made cheaper by having less intelligence
in it. The windows driver tells the printer what dots to print using
an undocumented protocol.