Out of curiosity, what is your specialist printer? No doubt someone, somewhere is hacking away at a Linux driver for it!
It is a Hi-Touch 640PS and there is a set of Linux drivers but it is closed source which they wont release (I've asked) and it was written for a quite old implementation of CUPS and it will not work. It is a dye-sublimation printer. My wife has a Kodak G600 which does have a working driver. Dye-sub printers are not as common in use as ink jets which is why the drivers are less common.
Stuart
That's a shame.
Don't suppose you would ever buy another Hi-Ti printer, because of the company's poor support and attitude towards Linux users.
We have been playing with a multi-protocol USB bridge controller called the Winchiphead CH341. It is a single IC containing a USB peripheral controller and a bridge controller supporting a range of serial protocols as well as the IEEE 1284 parallel printer protocol.
It's a very low cost solution with lots of different applications. We have been using it to program serial EEPROMs.
In large volumes the IC costs just a few cents. There's a Windows-only device driver for the USB controller, and there's an API provided through a Windows DLL. And yet the company refuses to release some proper specs of the IC. People want to get the device working in Linux and need the IC specs to do that. But the company isn't interested.
For a reason why, i guess it's another case of Follow-The-Money. The company sells a very profitable "Evaluation/Development Kit" which is, again, only available for Microsoft Windows. That kit would become obsolete if development moved away from Windows and into the Linux community.
Consequently, because of that rotten attitude, the company finds itself bad-mouthed across the internet.