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My first introduction to the internet was downloading Magic the Gathering card lists as postscript files via FTP and then FTPing them to a postscript printer. Would have been 1994 and they were some sort of Sun machine at LMU. Internet has been all downhill since then.

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A few years later (2002-ish), I setup a Zebra barcode/label printer that had a similar mechanism. I’d write the code for the label in the printers language (ZPL?) and then FTP a file to the printer.

I was in grad school in a wetlab, so I had to label a ton of microcentrifuge tubes. Having a quick web interface e to generate the ZPL files that would be FTP’d to the printer let me avoid writing all of that out by hand.

It was such a simple system. And the FTP server was basically a queue, so you could print a bunch of labels at a time.

...all downhill since then. Well said greybeard, well said. https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24

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