Re: Printing from WindowXP version of emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:02:28 +0100
> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se>
> CC: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> Sorry, you are right. I misread that part. It only says "This data type 
> is based on the ANSI standard, and if an application that has another 
> character set creates text data it does not print. This often presents a 
> problem in the extended character range, represented by values above 127.".
> 
> It does not say that it does not handle the characters above 127 at all 
> - which I believed.

ANSI text means, in Windows parlance, the 8-bit codepages used in
European locales.  Also, in some other place in MSDN they say
explicitly that 8-bit characters are accepted, but I cannot find that
place anymore.

> >  
> > http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/graphics/hh/graphics/provider_b941f8a9-ddb3-47ca-afa2-d06c6de2ce74.xml.asp
> >  
> >
> Thanks. This is what I have been reading too. I am however not sure that 
> this text means that "copy" for example are handled this way. The text 
> describes two steps where the spooler is used. In the first step the 
> spooler sends the job to GDI for conversion and get it back from GDI. In 
> the second step the spooler sends the data to the printer.
> 
> Could it not be that "copy" goes directly to the second step?

No.  The steps described in the above URL all happen _after_ the text
was sent to the spooler.  What the text does not describe is how
writing to PRN or \\server\printer winds up in the spool area.

> If you want to print in colors from within Emacs then the only option is 
> that it produces PostScript.

PostScript printing to a non-PostScript printer will only work thru
Ghostscript.

Anyway, I was talking about a different issue: how to find out why
COPY or the ways suggested for printing normal (non-color) text from
Emacs don't work in your case.  That has nothing to do with PostScript
and colors.

> I know of course there is a more basic problem: I can not even get black 
> and white printing to work the way you have suggested

Right, and that is the problem I thought we were trying to solve in
this thread.

> >The printer enters the PostScript state automatically when it sees the
> >PostScript preamble.
> >  
> I am sorry but I have seen printers where this does not happen.

They are either broken or incorrectly set up.