Printing in JDK 1.2
-------------------
Hello,

I have been working on printing for a while and I feel I have gotten the
most out of what the JDK can give me... Here are a few things that would
be  customer  to have, and a few other suggestions:

 - There is no possibility (or non documented) to change the current
printer to print to, the current implementation supports only printing
to the default printer as set in the OS.
 - also, some printers have properties (e.g. duplex printing, side
perforation...), even if no direct support is given, I think some way of
passing Properties should be given _after_ a printer is selected.
 - For text printing or PostScript printing, or any other printing aside
from components in the AWT, there is no possibility of streaming to the
printer, or at least sending a byte array... maybe support for LPR?

 - a side comment: It seems a  customer  idea to have the printing api under
io, in a way where the user would open a PrintingStream and output
characters to it for simple printing, or AWTPrintingStream to print
Components or others.

Walid Gedeon
(Review ID: 94268) 
======================================================================

Well, the way I solved this for now is to have an (hidden) agents
on separate machines, each with a different default printer, then
open a socket connection to the agent that corresponds to the printer
I need to use... very sad implementation, but works for now.
======================================================================

Most of these RFEs have been implemented for the 1.1 printing API in kestrel. 
Keeping bug open because providing a non-graphics io printing stream is a good 
idea. Not sure which group will be responsible for that project.
  xxxxx@xxxxx   1999-08-23

Reassigning to 2D. 2D is considering a proposal to add a text only renderer
and an EPS renderer on top of the 2D printing API. These new APIs would be
based on PrintWriters or OutputStreams.
  xxxxx@xxxxx   1999-08-23

=====================================

May add a text renderer in Merlin. 

  xxxxx@xxxxx   1999-08-25

====================================

merlin (1.4) will include APIS to locate services which can print text.
the ability to perform this treaming is dependent on the availability of
those services.

  xxxxx@xxxxx   2000-11-15
=======================