[Emacro-devel] Re: Emacs Installer for MS Windows (and printing) - a suggestion for ext-progs.el

[Bruce I. <ing...@ve...>]

Hmm. I could not find "getfile.exe" that w32-dlgopen.el depends on, 
anywhere on my Windows system.
I would have preferred a more portable solution, but it looks that I 
will end up writing a statically
compiled binary to ship with EMacro. Hopefully, I can have it call the 
common dialog box, for consistent
look & feel.
I'm busy these days, but I'll see what I can do.
BTW, I put in a patch for IMAP, but cannot test (I just have POP).
Perhaps I'll do a beta release of EMacro, before implementing this 
printing feature.

BTW, EMacro already does persistence (aka pickling). Since LISP is an 
interpreted language, you can just
write setq() statements to a file that you load, which is what 
e-prefs.el does.
You can pass these preferences via the command line or .ini file to a 
binary printing dialog box.

Lennart Borgman wrote:

>Hi Drew,
>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Drew Adams" <dre...@or...>
>
>  
>
>>1. I applaud your efforts to try to make Emacs work easier with Windows. I
>>hope you will ask for and get help and input from others, because a) the
>>problem isn't necessarily easy (if done right) and 2) this project will
>>    
>>
>help
>  
>
>>in the adoption of Emacs by more Windows users - it will be more likely to
>>succeed if you get more input.
>>    
>>
>
>Thanks, yes, I have seen I need the input from others. I have however kept
>some of the efforts in private mails to begin with     tosavepeoplestime.And
>I have not uploaded the code for the installer yet, because I need to polish
>a bit so someone else has a chance to read the code ;-)
>
>  
>
>>2. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to be able to help with this
>>(test, code). I've looked at your code briefly, but I can't judge it. For
>>one thing, I still don't know how to use customize! :). (I still use
>>defvar!)
>>    
>>
>
>There are surely things about customize I do not know about and that I would
>like help with. I believe that the developers list is the right place to ask
>for help with this, but I do not want to send it there now because RMS which
>to get the new release ready. I will try Emacs Wiki after your and Vinicius
>comments here.
>
>  
>
>>3. I'm not sure what you mean by ignoring Windows + Cygwin.
>>    
>>
>
>I just meant that I do not use this entries in the code for
>ext-progs-path-alist. There were special entries for this in pr-path-alist
>from where I stole the code.
>
>  
>
>>4. Previously, I think you had mentioned trying to use the Windows default
>>printer, and you wrote some code to take advantage of Windows file
>>associations in Emacs. Below is something related from help-gnu-emacs
>>    
>>
>(Bruce
>  
>
>>Ingallis) about obtaining 1) Window printer info programmatically, and 2)
>>letting users use the Windows printer dialog box from Emacs. You might
>>    
>>
>want
>  
>
>>to hook up with Bruce to work on your project. Something else (somewhat)
>>related to that is w32browser-dlgopen.el, based on dlgopen.el by Binu Jose
>>Philip. I just uploaded w32browser-dlgopen.el to EmacsWiki
>>(http://www.emacswiki.org/elisp/wthreetwobrowser-dlgopen.el). The C source
>>code for dlgopen functionality is attached, just in case you can no longer
>>find it on the web.
>>    
>>
>
>Thanks, I have included dlgopen already as a choice in the installer.
>
>When it comes to the printer choices I fear it is complicated. You normally
>in ms windows get a printer dialog where there is an option for choosing the
>printer and different options depending on the printer you choose. This
>dialog will show up from my w32-print.el (because it is shown by mshtml.dll
>which is used by the shell for printing html files). I believe it is also
>shown by Ghostview and its relatives. However there is still one problem
>(even if one likes these solutions): If you temporarily change the printer
>this temporary setting is lost when you print the next time from Emacs. This
>is because the temporary setting is set in the subprocess that prints and
>this is killed and restarted every time a print job is started from Emacs.
>
>I do not believe that the suggestion below for finding the list of printers
>is useful here. Indeed I do believe that it clutters the user interface for
>Emacs on windows since it present the user with a new interface for choosing
>printers that is not familiar for ms windows users. Maybe it could be of
>help for setting the default printer temporarily but I doubt it. However I
>could be wrong of course ;-)
>
>The problems with the printer choice comes from the fact that the printing
>API:s in the GDI interface is not used. If the structure of ps-print.el and
>the GDI interface is suffeciently similar it would perhaps be possible to
>manage to get this into Emacs by a minor rewrite of ps-print.el (with
>something similar to w32::API in perl), but it still requires a whole lot of
>work and a very good knowledge of ps-print, PostScript and the GDI API.
>However if that was done Ghostview and relatives would no longer be needed
>on ms windows for Emacs printing. Then it would of course unfortunately be
>different on other os:es. So it would be best to do that kind of thing at
>least in concert with a rewrite for GNU/Linux. I guess there is something
>similar to the GDI interface. Or there is going to be if GNU/Linux will have
>success. Big job ;-(
>
>  
>
>>5. A final piece of advice (a request), which you are probably following
>>anyway: It's best to adopt the Unix philosophy of making small, modular
>>stuff that can work together (mix & match) to make bigger stuff, rather
>>    
>>
>than
>  
>
>>try to provide a global, monolithic "solution" for everthing & everyone.
>>    
>>
>The
>  
>
>>latter is condemned to be ignored by most users.
>>    
>>
>
>A very good advice. I started a bit differently but soon realized that I
>have to split things so I have done that. However I still want a global
>solution at installation. This is going to be a hierarchic solution shown in
>a tree and I hope that fulfills both the wish for a global solution and the
>wish for small, modular pieces.
>
>Kind regards,
>Lennart
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+drew.adams=ora...@gn...
>>[mailto:help-gnu-emacs-bounces+drew.adams=ora...@gn...]On Behalf
>>Of Michael Slass
>>Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 3:06 PM
>>To: hel...@gn...
>>Subject: Re: dialog boxes
>>
>>Bruce Ingalls <ingallsb@verizon._NO.SPAM_.net> writes:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I discovered that I can use VBScript to enumerate available printers.
>>>There may even be a way to query the w32 registry via Emacs for the
>>>system default printer.
>>>
>>>I'd like to present users with a dialog box, to choose a printer.
>>>Since Emacs allows certain widgets/Windows controls in Customize
>>>buffers, and Emacs allows popups, can I put radio buttons and/or check
>>>boxes into a popup dialog box?
>>>
>>>Otherwise, some sample code, which makes it easy to populate a
>>>Customize buffer with options and a submit button, to act like a
>>>dialog box, would be appreciated.
>>>
>>>Who knows? Perhaps it will be possible to scan /etc/printcap or
>>>Gnome/KDE settings, to choose a printer at runtime.
>>>      
>>>
>>At the absolute quickest and dirtiest end of the spectrum, you could
>>use the list you get from VB to create a list of lists, and use that
>>in `completing-read'.
>>
>>(message "you chose printer %s"
>> (completing-read
>>  "chose a printer: "
>>  (mapcar
>>   (lambda (elt) (list elt))
>>   ( <list of printers here> )) nil t))
>>
>>completing-read will pop-up the "window of possibilities", which I
>>think you can mouse-click on to select a choice.
>>
>>Not exactly what you want, but REALLY fast to implement. -- Mike Slass
>>    
>>
>
>
>  
>