Re: Windows Printing

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 15:10:21 +0200
> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se>
> CC:  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> However that is not my point. I just want to stress that the information 
> in Info should be augmented. Otherwise we might waste some peoples time.

When we know what to say for them to be able to fix Emacs printing, we
will.


> >> My conclusion was that the state of the printer is 
> >> not reset when accessed in the way Emacs does it on w32. Getting the 
> >> printer port is done in a standard way (I mean according to MS 
> >> documentation) but sending the data is not supposed to be done as Emacs 
> >> does it (if I understand this correctly, see the thread).
> >>     
> >
> > Sorry, I disagree with this conclusion.  The MS docs do not say
> > explicitly that ``sending data is not supposed to be done as Emacs
> > does it'', and the simple fact is that the way we do it in Emacs works
> > on the vast majority of Windows systems.
> >   
> I am very sure about the conclusion that the printer is not reset when 
> accessed from Emacs. What exactly do you disagree upon?

That ``sending data is not supposed to be done as Emacs does it'' on
MS-Windows.

> You might be right that this works for the majority of Windows system - 
> I am not sure. But as above how can you be sure?

Because your reports were the first time I've heard about such strange
problems.  If lots of people have them, why aren't they speaking up?

> We might be reading the MS documentation differently. But I tried to 
> point to some parts of the manual (in the thread on the mailing list) 
> that made me come to the (tentary) conclusion that printing on MS 
> Windows should be done in a different way than Emacs currently does it. 
> The supported way (as I read the MS docs) is through the use the GDI 
> interface (which I know very little about in practice).

If someone contributes code to do that, I don't think it will be
rejected.  Assuming that it blends well into the overall Emacs
printing interface (which in practice probably means we should wrap
that code in an external lpr emulator program).

> > The use of Ghostscript is covered by the manual, in the node you
> > mentioned.  As for htmlize.el, I refuse to recommend Emacs users to
> > use Explorer or Notepad to print on Windows.  Sorry.
> >   
> A little bit unfair. I do not recommend Notepad or Explorer. I use 
> htmlize.el + Firefox ;-)

Most Windows users don't have Firefox.

> Then perhaps a link to http://EmacsWiki.org/ could be in the Info node? 

That's something for the FAQ, not the manual.