Re: Printing from WindowXP version of emacs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 03:42:09 +0100
> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se>
> CC: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> >Emacs needs either a port name or a printer name, and it treats those
> >as if they were files.  These two possibilities cover most of the
> >Windows printer configurations I've seen.  The question is, what is
> >your configuration, and why these two possibilities don't work for it.
> >
> You might be right. Maybe it can work. I do not remember all the tests I 
> did any more why they failed and I leave it to someone else who think 
> this is worth trying.

It cannot be checked on anyone's machines but yours.  If you don't
think it's worth another try, it will never be investigated.

> However if you want to do it the way you suggest don't you have to know 
> the specifics of the printer then?

You only need to know its name or the port which it captures.  The
Emacs manual explains how to find that out.

> In the environment where I am using a 
> printer there are a lot of different printers so I really want to avoid 
> doing anything that is printer specific. I want to use the printing 
> interface that Windows supply. That interface handles all the printer 
> specific details if you call it the right way.
> 
> Have I missed something in the sources? Does Emacs use this interface? 

AFAIR, you brought this up on the developers' list some time ago.  In
response, you were offered to write code to access the current default
printer on all supported systems, so that Emacs could use that
interface in a platform-independent fashion.  IIRC, that was the last
I've heard about this idea, which IMHO is too bad.

> If it does then I am simply wrong. If it does not then I prefer to use 
> the system independent interface that Emacs supplies in 
> browse-url-of-file which I use in htmlize-view.el.

This interface is for browsing a URL, not for printing.  What we want,
I think, is a way to print on the default printer that doesn't require
the user to press any more buttons or choose menu items on the Web
browser.

Anyway, let's drop this issue.  It's quite clear that you are so happy
with your solution that you don't want to hear anything unfavorable
about it.  Who am I to try preaching to you?