Re: [opensuse] RFR: Printing From Browsers


----- Original Message -----
From: "Randall R Schulz" <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <opensuse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:53 PM
Subject: [opensuse] RFR: Printing From Browsers


Hi,

I am almost always frustrated by the results of printing HTML pages from
Firefox (I'm using version 2.0.x). The most common problem I encounter
is that text lines mean nothing to the pagination process and it is
common for a row of text to be sliced horizontally and split across a
page boundary.

Does anyone know of a browser that does well with printing?

I never heard of a browser that prints very well.
The obvious reason is html just isn't designed for that.
It's designed intentionally to flow to fill the shape of whatever
container it's in. (render as sensibly as possible in any size/shape
display device.) whereas documents intended to be printed are
written and formatted for a specific type of "display" (hard copy)
from the outset.

But that very statement about flowing to fit any window
makes me think that it should be no problem for a browser
or plug-in to simply re-render the page in an imaginary window
that has the same properties as a printed ***, (A4 or Letter
dimensions at 300 dpi, or maybe 100dpi for rendering the page
since thats what web designers assume screens are,
and then scale the result to 300 or just ask the printer
driver to do so)

In my own app I have to generate html specially for printing.
There are a few css attributes that can provide
the crudest of ability to make an html document that paginates
sort of ok. I have to have pre-formatted text (captured
print-to-file from an application) and then in html I specify
the font type and size, and wrap the text (or every x lines of
it) in pre tags, and apply css page-break-before to the pre tag.
Similarly, for scanned documents, I apply the same css
page-break-before attrib to an img tag and display the img
with 100% width and the height unspecified, which, as long as
as the image was a letter or a4 geometry, ends up printing
sensibly even though you can only see part of the image
actually in the browser window.

Since I have to both a) have content that I somehow
know is already pre-formatted well for printing,
and b) inject my own page breaks where I happen to
know they should go because of a). I don't see how
a random html that wasn't specifically written to
be printed can print very well.

<head>
<style type="text/css">
pre.ff {page-break-before: always}
img.ff {page-break-before: always}
</style>
</head>

<img src="pgtest01.jpg" width="100%" class=ff>

<pre class=ff>
[...]
</pre>

--
Brian K. White brian@xxxxxxxxx http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk!

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