Support

Over the past few years, Microsoft has periodically changed the rules for creating and installing printer drivers.  We initially thought that these driver issues were just collateral damage, resulting from Microsoft's upgrades to the security functions.  However, upon further investigation, it appears as though Microsoft’s actual goal is to shift all printers onto Microsoft-provided drivers, while discontinuing the use of all third party drivers.  

As we expect Microsoft to make it continually more difficult (if not impossible) to load FGL and other non-Microsoft drivers, we plan to develop alternate means for communicating with our printers:

SDK's

We have developed Windows, Mac and Linux SDKs to provide our customers with the opportunity to make a smooth transition to the new driverless platform. The SDKs can be found here: Sample code and SDK

The SDKs will initially support the use of our FGL printer drivers.  However, should Microsoft eliminate the use of third party drivers, the SDKs will cease to support our drivers, at that time.

Microsoft Drivers

Microsoft provides their own drivers for a number of formats.  This allows them to justify the upcoming discontinuation of everyone else’s drivers.  We are looking at the possibility of modifying our firmware to support one or two of these Microsoft printer drivers.

PCL6

The PCL6 driver has a mode where it requires only PCL5 compatibility.  We think that upgrading our current PCL driver from PCL4 to PCL5 could be accomplished by the end of the year.  Of course, this would require customers to switch from FGL to PCL firmware.

PWG

This format is used by AirPrint.  We will be investigating the extent of the design effort required to develop the firmware to support this.  If we decide to pursue this option, we expect that it could take over a year to implement.

Note: Those customers who use a hybrid communication method where both the printer driver is used for WYSIWYG printing and pass-through mode to communicate in FGL, may not be able to do this using the PCL driver/firmware solution. The PCL firmware will replace the FGL firmware in the printer. We are currently unable to oversee the consequence using the new to develop PWG driver solution.

While we do not expect Microsoft to take any immediate action to eliminate the use of third party drivers, we wanted to give you the opportunity to address this issue with as much time as possible.