Printing digital: setting white point and black point?

What I understand is that when printing, you want to set the white point to 95% brightness and the black point to 5% brightness. This allows details to remain in the lightest and darkest areas--so that parts of the image are not just the white paper or solid black ink. What an instructor in school also told me ( years ago when digital photography was assertively taking over darkrooms) was that: "in darkroom printing you would never have pure white on the paper since a small amount of light would still reach the white areas. So by setting the output brightness down a touch, you mimic the native aesthetic of darkroom printing; and that is what people are used to seeing."

My questions surround printing to chromogenic prints. I use WHCC where they use light printers to make traditional chemical prints.

1. Do I need to worry about the above issues? They seem like they might be only native to printers that spread ink. Are the light printers "tight" enough to allow pure white to exist in a print?

2. If they do have the same issues, does anyone have any tips to make the prints not look like crap. I've had to adjust the white point on many prints to WHCC to create separation, because I've wanted a pure white border, and the background of the print was a (255,255,255) white. But when I adjust the white point, the print loses contrast; I can never get it looking as good as it was before the white point adjustment. I never bother with the black point, maybe that's an issue, but it doesn't seem like it would be.

I say it depends on the image. See this short write up.......
www.westcoastimaging.com/wci/page/info/photoshoptip/tip13.html

Process some test photos on your calibrated monitor. Take some tone readings, circle or otherwise mark those areas, and label them with the tone reading you took ( 0 to 255 ). Order uncorrected test prints from your lab. Evaluate the marked tones with your eyes. Can you see any difference between 255 and 250? How about 0 and 10? You should be able to nail down where total black and white starts occurring in the prints compared to what you are seeing on your monitor. Test shots of subjects with texture will help you evaluate easier (the classic black and white towels).

As long as the histogram is tapering down at the ends then setting the black point to 0 and white to 255 still results in very few pixels in the entire photo reaching actual black or white. It shouldn't be a problem unless the histogram is really bunched up on one side or the other.

I do not have any experience with ink jet printing. I worked in both the BW and color darkroom, and now order chromogenic prints from my digital files. I disagree with your instructor. Most of my hand printed silver gelatin and chromogenic prints can be laid against unexposed white printing paper, and have similarly bright whites. I think actual black and white in photographic prints looks sharp and snappy, while highlights and shadows that don't quite fully reach the ends of the tonal scale tend to look dull. It's just opinion, not right or wrong. I think popular media suggests that sharp and snappy is generally more popular with photo viewers. If actual white cannot be achieved in the darkroom I'd dim the safe light and look for leaking enlargers. These are common problems in high school and college darkrooms.

There is a technique called flashing where paper is purposely pre-exposed to light to deal with negatives that have very dense highlights. Even with the pre-exposure the effects on the brightness of the highlights is not supposed to be noticeable to the print viewer.