Re: Printing from WindowXP version of emacs

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>>>>See http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/PrintWithWebBrowser
>>>>   
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Yuck!  Don't we have a better way than to submit print jobs to Notepad
>>>and Explorer??
>>> 
>>>      
>>>
>>Did you try it?
>>    
>>
>
>What for?  I've read the code, and I understand what it does.  I don't
>doubt for a second that it will work, because I know what ShellExecute
>is and does on Windows.
>  
>
You have been reading an old version I believe. Please see 
http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/DL/elisp/htmlize-view.el

This does not use Notepad or ShellExecute. It is supposed to be as OS 
independent as possible.

>How is it easier than setting up lpr-program and printer-name in your
>`.emacs' (which is what I do on all the Windows machines I use)?
>  
>
As I have already told this did not work for me.

Let me tell you what I have done and seen. When I started using Emacs I 
looked in the Emacs NT FAQ, searched the Internet and tried everything. 
Nothing worked. Or nearly. I did not try GhostScript/GSView because I 
felt a bit uncomfortable with that. I think the trouble has to do with 
changing network routines in Windows, but I have not investigated it 
further. (Too much job and not very interesting, actually.)

Then I looked into the Emacs C development sources and read a bit about 
the printing interface in Windows. As far as I can see Emacs just does 
not implement the printing interface currently. After lurking around for 
a while I draw the conclusion that it will not do this in the near 
future and certainly not in the next release. It would in my opinion be 
good if it did but I am not sure that everyone agrees on this. (I 
believe GhostScript/GSView might implement a Windows printing interface 
but I do not remember the details right now. It might not have been a 
full implementation.)

However I wanted a simple solution that just worked. That is why I 
suggest the solution above for new users. The browser, whether it is 
Internet Explorer, Firefox or something else implements Windows printing 
interface. They have to, otherwise they would not be able to attract a 
large user base. So I trust that implementation, do not care about it, 
just tells them to show the file created with 
htmlize.el/htmlize-view.el. Then the user just prints as usual from the 
web browser.

The only problem I have seen so far with this is that I sometimes forgot 
that I have left Emacs. The picture in the browser looks exactly as in 
Emacs, htmlize.el is very good (and I can say that without shame, I did 
not write it).

So our different opinions might come out of different experiences. It 
may also have to do with that I feel much at home with the interface 
concept in Windows. Without at all beeing an expert on it I think it is 
an attempt to a good design. All the attempts in Emacs NT FAQ for 
printing bypasses this interface as far as I can see.

>You are free to do what you want, but I have grave reservations about
>recommending such solutions to Emacs users at large, while other
>solutions exist.  Certainly not as the first alternative.  IMHO, at
>the very least.
>
As you probably understand I disagree. I think it creates much less 
trouble for the user if the proposed solution tries to follow the 
interface designed for printing in Windows.