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I used to have postcript printing working perfectly in Emacs 21 in Windows+Cygwin, but after upgrading to Emacs 23, I am receiving the following error in the minibuffer:

Opening output file: invalid argument, C:/PDFCreator:

My current .emacs contain the current relevant statements:

(require 'ps-print)
(setq ps-spool-duplex t)
(setq ps-auto-font-detect nil)
(setq ps-print-color-p nil)

It used to have the following line as well:

(setq ps-lpr-command "qprt")

But it generates a similar error:

Searching for program: no such file or directory, qprt

Any idea what changed in Emacs 23 and how I can bring printing back to life?

(at this point I am only interested in printing to the default Windows printer, which is PDFCreator).

WinWin
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3 Answers3

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From the Emacs Wiki PrintingFromEmacs, the following configuration is recommended. Where lpr is the Cygwin lpr version.

  (setenv "PRINTER" "PDFCreator")
    (cond ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
       (setq ps-printer-name "PDFCreator")
       (setq ps-printer-name-option "-d")
       (setq ps-lpr-command "/bin/lpr")))

You could also use the Ghostscript configuration there and select the PDFCreator printer from the popup. Adjusting your GS_LIB and your ghostscript binary location accordingly.

(setenv "GS_LIB" "e:/tools/GSTools/gs8.14/gs8.14/lib;e:/tools/GSTools/gs8.14/fonts")
   (setq ps-lpr-command "e:/tools/GSTools/gs8.14/gs8.14/bin/gswin32c.exe")
   (setq ps-lpr-switches '("-q" "-dNOPAUSE" "-dBATCH" "-sDEVICE=mswinpr2"))
   (setq ps-printer-name t)
Appleman1234
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  • Thanks. The Cygwin lpr version works, except that the ps-lpr-command should be plain `"lpr"` (neither `"/bin/lpr"` nor `"usr/bin/lpr"` works). – WinWin Mar 11 '12 at 17:56
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Note to users of PDFCreator - they now install a bunch of toolbars and take over your web browsers when you install it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdfcreator#Adware_toolbar_controversy

I had PDFCreator working fine with Emacs, then I made the mistake of letting PDFCreator update itself. It redirected all my search queries to Bing, took over a bunch of browser settings, added toolbars, default landing pages etc. It took me about an hour to clean out all the junk it added.

Gord Wait
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I had the same symtom as the poster, but it wasn't because of any change in Emacs 23. My printer is a postscript capable network printer.

First, my hostname had changed sligtly when my work computer was upgraded from Windows to Vista. I had to change one character accordingly: From

(setq ps-printer-name "//evf4ce46ac4ad3/seki81050470cm")

to

(setq ps-printer-name "//e7f4ce46ac4ad3/seki81050470cm")

This changed the error message from

direct-print-region-helper: Opening output file: invalid argument, //evf4ce46ac4ad3/seki81050470cm

to

direct-print-region-helper: Opening output file: no such file or directory, //e7f4ce46ac4ad3/seki81050470cm

Then I had to enable sharing of the printer. This is found in 

\\e7f4ce46ac4ad3\Printers

which probably can be found in a more generic way. \\%computername%\Printers didn't work for me; I don't know why.

Right-click on the printer icon, select Sharing and enable Share this printer, with a suitable printer name, preferably with no spaces in it.

This was enough to enable printing for me.

Helge
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