USB printer driver development for handheld devices

Abstract

Embedded systems such as handheld devices don't have the direct printing facility. Whenever a new system is built it should have a provision to connect to the various devices. Device driver is a program to control a particular device that is connected to your system. This paper presents a complete description of the printer driver for the handheld device, focusing mainly to write a generic printer driver so that the data in the device is sent directly to the printer through universal serial bus. However, it is possible to address a whole family of USB printers (such as HP, Epson, Canon and Lexmark). Previously handheld device had to connect to the printer through personal computer. Now, the device can connect directly to the printer. Mobile printing is the term used for printing from mobile devices such as a Palm handheld, a laptop, a Pocket PC or similar device, directed towards any USB printer. With mobile devices having smaller footprints of memory, display and other resources, the size of the printer driver should be small. To enable quick deployment on all kinds of devices, it should support for portability. The driver must be extensible to allow for future enhancement. The paper covers the complete design aspects and the implementation of the device driver for ARM based devices