Re: Printing from WindowXP version of emacs

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

Lennart Borgman wrote:

> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
>>
>> Go to this URL:
>>
>>  http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prdl_pif_dwfo.asp 
>>
>>
>> and then look in the section Printing Processes.
>>  
>>
> Thanks, but that was on of the pages I have been reading. It is a good 
> overview to start with. I am however looking for something about where 
> in that picture something like
>
>    c:\> copy file.txt \\host-name\queue-name
>
> ties in. (Or dito using LPT1 etc.) That page I mentioned in another 
> message (Print Job Formats) is at the bottom of the content table to 
> the left in the page above. Maybe that says a bit, but that is only 
> guesses. I am missing some pieces of information here. Seems like we 
> want more technical stuff.

I have been looking around a bit more. Here is something about device 
drivers, spooling etc:

   
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/graphics/hh/graphics/prnSpool_65349c7f-8e59-4d93-b5ff-0b346049b7f2.xml.asp

Maybe someone can find more about using copy like above? I have not been 
able to.

   
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/gdi/prntspol_0r1j.asp

So far the only really new thing to me in this thread has been CUPS, 
which I may have heard of before, but obviously forgotten. My 
conclusions for printing from Emacs on MS Windows are then:

- The printing interfaces on MS Windows and CUPS are different in a way 
that you actually have to write rather separate input printing code for 
them or complicated conversion sw. Emacs has good support for CUPS but 
not for the MS Windows printing interface (that wants EMF format).

- I can find nothing that makes me believe that the "copy" type 
solutions should work in all cases. (But I will do some more tests when 
I get time and I wel lcome more facts about this.)

- One solution to the problem is using an external program like 
GhostScript. I have not tried this, but it may be a very good solution. 
The advantage is that with it printing capabilities in Emacs on MS 
Windows are the same as those on *nix like systems with CUPS. The 
drawback is that is more job for the user since another program has to 
be installed.

- Another solution is the one I proposed (and which made some people 
upset for some reason) is using the web browser + 
htmlize-view.el/htmlize.el to print. The advantage is that you do not 
have to install any more programs, just to elisp files. You get 
printouts in colors of exactly the text that you have on the screen. 
There is very little job to do to get this working. The drawbacks is 
that this is not the way you print in Emacs on other systems (though you 
can use it on those systems too). You also have to know a little bit on 
the elisp level to add the files to your load-path and require 
htmlize-view from your .emacs.

I think the last solutions is easier. Other may differ. I think the best 
one can do is to summarize it like above and let the user choose. 
Nothing is right or wrong here. We are looking for working solutions. 
Please add more advantages and drawbacks if you can see some!