I asked these same questions, several years ago, both here and at Jim Cone's site about my unloved Pixma PRO1, and got very little response here, except from Sandy. Mr Cone said there just wasn't the demand, and very little reason to expand his system to Canon printers.
My Canon printed B&W prints very well, but I never used it enough to keep the head wet. My digital negatives were dismal.
However, I now know to make digital negatives and custom curves in PS. So I did learn something.
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