Open Printer Drivers - SDK Specification like J2EE Framework to enable Single or Installation of Driver in the End User System irrespective of Vendors. (Vendor Neutral Printer Drivers)

Context

HP Ink Advantage e3545 All in one Printer (Printer, Scan, Xerox) functions are provided by this printer.

We decided to upgrade the Printer or replace this with another printer in our Canon PIXMA G3000 that is also an All in one Printer (Printer, Scan, Xerox) features provided by this printer.

Situation and Reason for this Upgrade, was the need to buy and replace cartridges often requiring us to buy the HP branded cartridges (Color and Black) HP 768.

The Design of HP e3545 was that the Printers Cartridges included the ink supply with in cartridge.  However the Cartridge or the ribbon are capable for longer shelf life and probably required a ink refill.  That would mean the modularity of the Printer Cartridge had to be altered to segregate the cartridge function and provide an external ink tank.  I wasn't aware of the design nor explored heavily on the options available but my intent was to buy a printer at a reasonable capital price limit of Rs. 5,000.  This printer at that point I decided that HP 3545 All in one Printer would be valuable.

Now, the new printer has exactly solved this limitation with a provision of ink tanks (Black, Cyan, Yellow and Magnetta).  For a home user this might be good enough, however the CANON official refills cost Rs. 2,500 that includes 4 bottles of ink).

Now, in my home I use 4 laptops, 4 mobiles and other devices that might require me to connect and use the Printer when it is initialized and set up.

The possibilities of connecting to the printers are 

USB

Wired Network

Wireless Network - One to One Connection

Wireless Network - Printer detected and connected via a Wifi router

This means that the last options is very good option from the perspective of connecting one or more devices to the Printer just via a WIFI router where in the Printers is configured or paired once with the WIFI Router.

This apart the end users like me would have mandatorily install the Printer Make and Model Specific Driver for the Print Function or Scan Function to be accessible through each of our devices that would interact with the printer.  In my case 4 laptops and 4 smart phones.

Now, the ease of use or to reduce the need to manually or automatically install the printers driver when it was first detected and added to the respective OS Control Panels. 

This would mean the respective OS may include the drivers pack or fetch it online or we may have to install from the CD or Cloud Space or from USB drive.

This requires a good amount of disk space and also similar need every different types of devices we use.

Now, I was thinking of the following possibilities and how they could help the end users.

Open Printer Driver Specification - OPDS

This would mean the End user would just requires a Base installation of Open Base Printer  (All In One Driver) Pack that is based on the Open Printer(all in one) Drivers Specifications to their respective devices like laptop or smart phone connectivity.  This specification could be be thought to be in parallel or similar J2EE Specification.

What would this mean ?

All Operating Systems Solution Providers then could realize the Open Printer (all in one) Drivers Specification and provide a Open Base Printer Drive Pack in the OS by default,  this would enable most of the functions to be abstracted in the base driver pack and it's vendor neutral.  The Vendors of Printers could form a Standards Body and define the specification based on which the Operating Systems Solution Providers would provide Open Base Printer Driver Pack.   The end user can plug in any number of printer of any make or model and easily interact with the Printer or the All in one Device with out bothering to install any Software in their System.  

However, each vendors might not agree to include every function of theirs into the specification due to intellectual property conflict or due to business reasons to not disclose certain features.  But, all printers manufacturers the same function and hence they should be able agree on 30%-90% of the common functionalities found in any of the Printer or All in one devices that needs to be abstracted in the Open Printer Driver Specifications.  This might help in reducing their Operational Cost and however might be a challenge in managing Intellectual property rights.

The advantage from the end user perspective is that plug and play any printer with no extra installation.  Also, the user could buy different Make and Model of Printers in their life time due to their likes or dislikes.  This flexibility is probably worth exploring.

A similar approach for all other devices can be thought off.

What do we think or say about this idea?