Re: Printing from WindowXP version of emacs

[Ilya Zakharevich]

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Eli Zaretskii 
<eliz@gnu.org>], who wrote in article 
<mailman.20241.1135327583.20277.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>:
> > > > > >  Are long lines wrapped or lost? What is the page size in lines of
> > > > > >  input? Should line be terminated by CRLF, CR, or LF? 
> > 
> > > > > Can't say, it depends on the printer's setup, its driver software, and
> > > > > any other software that sits in between the application that sent the
> > > > > text and the wire.
> > 
> > > > I'm puzzled again: if you can't say, how can you claim you know how to
> > > > print?
> > 
> > > Because an application that prints doesn't care about these intimate
> > > details of the printer.
> > 
> > ???  IIRC, now we are discussing not the printer, but the pipe...
> > Anyway, consider these questions as concerning a pipe.
> 
> If you send text to the pipe (using COPY or file I/O, like Emacs
> does), you don't need to be bothered by these details (with the
> exception of the EOLs, which I think must be CRLF).  They are taken
> care of by the machinery that takes over once the text winds up in the
> pipe.

Nonsense.  I'm discussing the input format of this pipe, not the input
format of the printer.

> > (Yet another question is how to *force* a sequence of bytes to be
> > recognized as TEXT [as opposed to MetaFile or
> > RAW_PRINTER_COMMANDS].)

> I think the COPY method cannot send RAW commands or EMF.  I think to
> send RAW and EMF one needs to use suitable functions of the Windows
> API, not simple file I/O.

I believe you are mistaken.

> > According to the MS links you posted, I'm right; this pipes accepts
> > RAW_PRINTER_COMMANDS.  How it distinguishes it from "plain text"
> > (which it supports "too", whatever it means) is not documented...
> 
> I think it distinguishes given the API calls you use to send the
> stuff.

What we are discussing is a pipe.  You use whatever API there is to
write to file (do not know the names of Win* entry points).

> > Only if you print ASCII only you can forget about encodings

> I think this is also true if you use the encoding native to the
> current locale, since the printer most probably supports that by
> default.

There is no "current locale".  You probably mean "current codepage";
one needs to know the output the examples I posted (with chcp).

Hope this helps,
Ilya