The output layer was initially designed to help reduce the amount of
code duplicated in output drivers. An unfortunate side-effect of that
was that it turned into a midlayer and it became difficult to make the
output drivers work without bending over backwards to fit into the
midlayer.
This commit starts to convert the midlayer into a helper library by
exporting most of the common functions so that they can be used by the
output drivers directly. Doing so will allow output drivers to reuse
common code paths but more easily override them where necessary.