Re: Printing

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:53:04 +0200
> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> Cc: rms@gnu.org, cmr.pent@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:48 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:04:37 +0200
> >> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> >> Cc: rms@gnu.org, cmr.pent@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >>
> >> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> >> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:36:01 +0200
> >> >> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> >> >> Cc: rms@gnu.org, cmr.pent@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >> >>
> >> >> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 5:10 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> >> > One way to fix this would be to update our default for
> >> >> > ps-mule-font-info-database so that it handles Unicode -- assuming that
> >> >> > modern PostScript printers indeed support large subranges of the
> >> >> > Unicode codespace.  I'm not an expert on printing, so I wouldn't know
> >> >> > if this is possible.
> >> >>
> >> >> Since printing with Emacs through the web browser (using
> >> >> htmlfontify.el) does work it seems like modern printers do support
> >> >> this. Or am I missing something?
> >> >
> >> > You are missing the fact that I was talking about PostScript printing,
> >> > not printing via the Windows printer API.
> >>
> >> I am not sure about that. Could someone who have this problem and have
> >> a PostScript printer try printing through the web browser, please?
> >
> > And that will prove what, exactly? that Windows knows how to use a PS
> > driver for a printer?
> 
> I think that the browser will send PostScript to the printer.

Yes, it will.

> So I believe it will show that the printer actually can print all
> the text

Not necessarily: PostScript language includes a capability to download
characters and images to the printer.  So the fact that something is
on paper does not yet mean it was printed using fonts that are built
into the printer.  (See ps-bdf.el for an example of how Emacs does
that; however, the results are not very nice, perhaps because the BDF
fonts are not suited well to printer resolution, only to that of
terminals.)