[PLUG] "Dumb" [as in naive] question

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2017, Richard Owlett wrote:

> Does an "output device" have any carnal knowledge of from whence its input
> cometh?

   Nope. Most unices, including linux, consider everything to be a file.
While the specific command to transfer data to an output device reflects the
specifics of the hardware, they're all transferring data from one file to
another.

   That being written, a printer knows its data comes via a printer driver,
but what fed that driver is immaterial.

Rich