different parts of the driver already allowed 16 bit. Eight bit was allowed in the document bit depth with previous op sys yet for example the HP 9180 uses full 16 bit screening on the 8 bit document depth. On the Z printers there would be a gain in smoothness if the drivers were written to use 12 bit document depth or more and screening at 16 bit. The problem is the hit on resources, and it would make printing long documents very very slow.
And as I have said before, and Ernst, using a rip allows higher bit depth, (even higher than 16 ) where Gutenprint is an open source rip that works very well for any type of testing, even running raw data, etc. Epson have an advantage in the printing stream in that the conversions of the color information is done in the printer whereas HP and Canon are done on the spool file (or so I'm told).
For faster processing HP would need to have more powerful ASICs onboard for reasonable print times of spooled files. HP definitely have the ability to do all of the above, yet I wouldn't count on a quick upgrade in printer drivers to allow 16 bit doc depth drivers for Leopard for the Z series. Maybe for the 9180 , I don't know, yet Having less colour, the 9180 would see less gain in transitions.
