Hi aamer4yu. Thank you.

The harm is as follows:
* QPrinter lets the user configure stuff; if I use a custom external program, I would want those options passed on and understood
* (I am on X11; would prefer non-platform spec. stuff though) QPrinter::setPrintProgram() can indeed be used; however it does not solve the painting part (I still have to paint myself). It only changes the printing backend.
* QWidget::render is no real help; I do not want to render stuff myself. I have a defined set of files (ASCII, PostScript, PDF) that I would like to be printed. I have no desire to implement rendering those myself. (Although I already did that once for postscript.)

What I would like is the possibility to pass an existing (e.g.) postscript file to QPrinter and just use its configuration capabilites.