Graphical printers

Well, yeah, that. Currently, you can attach a printer to a computer and have it print text. The idea is that you could maybe attach a printer to an advanced computer (advanced printer?) to print out graphics. I figure they kind of could work internally (and in your hand) like maps do. Also, same as with maps, putting a printed page in an item frame would display the drawing.

I'm thinking that as peripherals, Advanced printers could interact with advanced computers like advanced monitors the same way that normal monitors and normal printers interact with normal computers.

It just occurred to me and I didn't find any obviously related suggestions in the search results. I thought it might make sense in the context of the mod.

Not going to overthink it, though. Just throwing the idea out there to see if it catches any interest.

Similar things have been suggested before, search the term 'printer' and you will see…
Graphics as in graphics that we are limited to on computers? well we kind of can already. Currently you can change the colour of the text by printing part of the page, changing ink colour and then printing the rest and by using a character such as # or @ it fills most of the pixel, but colour ASCII art is still possible…
The only one bad thing I found about this method is that you loose the ink level as you have to end the page. Because of this I do think printers should be revisited a little, just in the sense of maybe more than one ink slot or some other way to not waste our valuable dyes.

I doubt this would ever be implemented in the mod. Perhaps as a peripheral, but certainly not in the mod itself.

Cranium, on 03 April 2013 - 04:16 AM said:

I doubt this would ever be implemented in the mod. Perhaps as a peripheral, but certainly not in the mod itself.

They said so about colored displays~

I don't think it's too far fetched, that's why I suggested it.

theoriginalbit, on 03 April 2013 - 12:05 AM said:

Graphics as in graphics that we are limited to on computers?

Yeah I was thinking its relation to "old" printers be comparable to advanced computers vs. "old" computers.

I think that multiple slots for ink, and possibly even bars that show ink levels, would be a great improvement to normal printers. Graphical printers shouldn't be added unless graphical screens are (which will never happen)

Technically, there are graphical screens. These would be called Advanced Monitors. So if you consider an advanced printer to be just like an advanced monitor, it's not that much of a stretch.

"Truly graphical" (pixel-level) printers would probably call for "truly graphical" monitors and require "truly graphical" computers. That's more complicated and a different thing than what I'm suggesting. If you want those things, you could very well use them IRL because they work better there :P/>

The devs could simply get the map code and edit it a little bit so that it doesn't have the positional markers and it was a simple white page, and allow those to be printed.

In fact, there was a printer mod capable of this before the official printers got out. Also had a lot better color handling. Doesn't seem to be updated anymor though…

Given how advanced computers are handled, I think it would be a more "in-line" implementation to be able to switch between (or have separate function for) outline and write on printers. Outline would surround the letter in color, so using a space would produce a solid block. Write would work as it does now.

And for color, guess what, my first printer had only one ink cartridge, and to make color my family had to swap out one cartridge for another and print in mattes. This was on a Windows 3.1.1 computer, as well.

I support this. You could print manuals for programs with screenshots and stuff.

I don't know about some of the stuff people have suggested here. But it would make sense if printers were capable of writing the same things that players are capable of writing with a Book and Quill (underlined, bold, strikethrough, italicized, and colored text). Actually, is it not possible to do that already? Has anyone ever tried?

The original idea was for it to work just like an advanced monitor, but formatting could be interesting. Never tried it on normal printers though, so no idea if it is possible.