Al principi, tot desenvolupador d' un programa que era capaç d' imprimir també havia d' escriure els seus propis controladors. Això era força complicat perquè diferents programes tenien formats diferents. Fins i tot programes amb el mateix ús, per exemple, els processadors de text, tot sovint no entenien d' altres formats. De manera que no hi havia una interfície comú per a totes les impressores, per tant els programadors sovint tan sols donaven suport a uns pocs models seleccionats.
Earlier on in history, every developer of a program that was capable of producing printable output had to write his own printer drivers too. That was quite complicated, because different programs have different file formats. Even programs with the same purpose, for example: word processors, often do not understand each other's formats. There was therefore no common interface to all printers, hence the programmers often supported only a few selected models.