Re: Printing from WindowXP version of emacs

[Lennart Borgman]

Peter Dyballa wrote:

> Am 17.12.2005 um 22:25 schrieb Lennart Borgman:
>
> > It looks to me that the printing interface in CUPS is different from 
> > that normally used by GUI applications in Windows.
>
> Please beware, Lennart! CUPS is the mechanism that takes takes items 
> from the printer queue(s) and transfers them to the right printer.
>
> The print dialog is separated from this. It's almost nothing (lpr 
> -Pprinter_queue_name file), or it's an application from OpenWindows, 
> CDE, KDE, Gnome, or Aqua on Mac OS X. Usually UNIX programmes use the 
> programmatic interface to put something into the spool area, i.e. the 
> printer queue. Usually the programme should not need to take care what 
> kind of file type this data is. CUPS will recognise this and use means 
> to convert the data into a form compatible to the printer's needs -- 
> or it fails and raises a message, or the printer fails and CUPS raises 
> that message. 

Thanks, I am glad to learning more here.  The basic difference I can see 
that affects Emacs is the input format to the printing interfaces.  On 
MS Windows the printing interface wants input in the form of EMF to the 
printer drivers. (You can bypass this, but then you have to know more 
about the printer and that is not desireable for a general solution 
IMO.) On those system that uses CUPS other formats are acceptable. (In 
fact I wonder if CUPS can handle EMF.) The filter handling takes care of 
this.

The current architechture for printing in Emacs looks like it is well 
suited for CUPS but not that well for EMF.

Does the above look correct to you, Peter?