Default printer

Default printer

[Bruce_Ingalls]

I recently posted code on gnu.emacs.sources, on how to determine the
default printer on modern Microsoft Windows systems.
This code could certainly be improved, to, say, list *all* known printers,
for M-x customize to select from. I'm sure one of our inclined readers
could do this far more efficiently, than could I.

Any thoughts, on good strategies for determining default printers, or
lists of known printers, on (GNU) Linux compatible systems, (e.g. Solaris,
BSD), or on OSX, VMS, etc?

Should we leave /dev/lp0 as a good guess?
How about scanning /etc/printcap?
I suspect Red Hat leaves something in /etc/sysconfig/
What about CUPS & IPP?

While my intent is to use this, to make Emacs easier to use, perhaps I
should ask this on comp.unix.shell, or other suggestion?

Thanks, Bruce.

 



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Re: Default printer

[Kevin Rodgers]

Bruce_Ingalls wrote:
> I recently posted code on gnu.emacs.sources, on how to determine the
> default printer on modern Microsoft Windows systems.
> This code could certainly be improved, to, say, list *all* known printers,
> for M-x customize to select from. I'm sure one of our inclined readers
> could do this far more efficiently, than could I.
> 
> Any thoughts, on good strategies for determining default printers, or
> lists of known printers, on (GNU) Linux compatible systems, (e.g. Solaris,
> BSD), or on OSX, VMS, etc?

10 years ago I wrote printers.el, which used the LPDEST environment
variable (or PRINTER) and the lpstat command (or the /etc/printcap file)
to provide a primitive customization facility for System V (or BSD) Unix
(M-x set-system-printer-default, M-x read-printer):

http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.sources/msg/5f609871cca03963

> Should we leave /dev/lp0 as a good guess?
> How about scanning /etc/printcap?
> I suspect Red Hat leaves something in /etc/sysconfig/
> What about CUPS & IPP?

/dev/lp*: No such file or directory

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CupsInEmacs

-- 
Kevin Rodgers