From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard M Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Printing Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:02:19 -0400 Message-ID: References: <5f0660120903280331y780c80b7i57a8115dc4b029eb@mail.gmail.com> <5f0660120903281352v5d7ab83cy44fcff3cbf4581cb@mail.gmail.com> <87ljqnkvn9.fsf@jehiel.elehack.net> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1238677390 15608 80.91.229.12 (2 Apr 2009 13:03:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 13:03:10 +0000 (UTC) Cc: michael@elehack.net, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Apr 02 15:04:28 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1LpMap-0008Ju-1R for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:04:27 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:45595 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LpMZP-000854-Tl for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:03:00 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1LpMYw-00084G-LR for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:02:30 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1LpMYp-00082T-Ku for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:02:28 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=39165 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1LpMYp-00082A-1S for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:02:23 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]:46146) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1LpMYn-0005ND-Jl for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:02:21 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1LpMYl-0002dL-K0; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:02:19 -0400 In-reply-to: (message from Eli Zaretskii on Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:16:11 +0300) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:110000 Archived-At: In this area, we basically didn't move much since ps-mule was introduced more than 10 years ago. Based on that experience, I fear that if we stick to PostScript as the only decent printing facility in Emacs, we will not improve our support of printing non-ASCII text for the foreseeable future. If you think otherwise, please explain how come we are still where we were in 1998. This is not the right way to choose the method for solving a problem. How much people have worked on this in the past is beside the point. The real question about printing non-ASCII text is what needs to be done to make ps-print handle more character sets, and what the obstacles are. For example, on my home XP box, the default printer is set up to use the PostScript driver, but applications still don't emit PostScript themselves; the driver does. Supporting application-specific APIs could be a big pain in the neck. Each one of them could be a big pain in the neck. It might be a lot easier to make ps-print find the necessary fonts, if that can be dne in a mostly portable way, than to support several totally different printing APIs. If supporting these printing APIs requires redesigning Emacs redisplay, that would yoke this big task to an even bigger task which might be a mistake anyway. It would take many years to redo redisplay and fix the bugs. Interfaces such as Cairo would probably impede portability even if they are not 100% unportable, and they might also cause a slowdown in redisplay. I if you want a good chance of making progress happen, I suggest you start working on the solitions that are much easier, even if they are difficult in absolute terms. Would you like to collect the docs of the APIs used for finding and specifying fonts on the various systems, so people can see what work is really involved in supporting them?