stion. Does a printer driver HAVE to be executable code? Or can it be a set of control tables that define the encoding of information to be preformed by a single piece of software (such as, for example a Graphics Device Interface or GDI?) that incorporates the intelligence, but relies on the different control tables to change the output to match the requirements for each specific printing device?

Apple is quoted as claiming that "the system includes a page-description-language component configured to generate printer data for the selected printer based on obtained capability information for the selected printer." That sounds to me as though the PPD file is used as a set of control tables to configure the rendering software -- and as far as I am concerned, that means the PPD file (which is being transferred to the mobile device) IS a printer driver.

At least, when I developed the printer drivers that enabled our typesetting application to drive dozens of different typesetting devices, simply by loading different control tables, back in 1974, that was my understanding of what I was doing.

I really SHOULD have patented the idea, shouldn't I?

Not.