[HN Gopher] CSS for printing to paper
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CSS for printing to paper
Author : Tomte
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-03-03 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (voussoir.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (voussoir.net)
| n3storm wrote:
| I would love to see some svg thrown into this.
|
| Let's kill pdf!
| mcdonje wrote:
| So... Epub?
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| EPUB is great for its use case, but is not particularly good
| at handling printing. Not even EPUB3 does a good job for
| print, IMO.
| h2odragon wrote:
| .ps.gz forevah!
| wiredfool wrote:
| Or, lets try to get SVG graphs to render properly in print-to-
| pdf?
| herpdyderp wrote:
| I recently had to figure out a good chunk of this (on my own, I
| wish I had this resource then) for a one-off project. The biggest
| thing I learned was to give up all hope of cross-browser
| printing: just use Chrome. Every browser treats almost every
| property differently or flat out ignores them, but I found that
| Chrome had the highest score in doing what I wanted.
| gazook89 wrote:
| There are two sites that share a common history that provide a
| tool for TTRPG players to create homebrew documents, GM Binder
| and Homebrewery, that both only target Chrome for this reason.
| It's great if we can support all browsers and don't want the
| site to break in any browser, but we advise users that Chrome
| is the target almost just so we know authors and readers are on
| the same page.
| a1o wrote:
| I almost never do real printing (to paper), but this looks really
| easy to get something working. Also the cheatsheet at the end of
| the article is a super useful summary of the css rules used.
| Great article to save in case I face having to build something
| that prints in the future.
| persnickety wrote:
| Browser support for printing CSS is spotty. Worse: some features,
| like footnotes on every page, don't have any equivalent in CSS I
| know of.
|
| Is there any easy to use/hack HTML layouting engine where I could
| experiment with custom CSS attributes and bridge that gap? Would
| anything from Servo be suitable?
|
| Modifying an entire browser with its bloat is too much effort.
| There is no JS or cookies on paper (they can be in paper if you
| wrap them).
| kabes wrote:
| Css has support for footnotes, but it's not yet supported by
| chrome
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| I just laid out a book using Pagedjs.org. Although there were a
| few bugs in the preview experience, the final output was perfect,
| and probably took me a quarter the time it would have in InDesign
| (which I'm fairly competent in).
|
| The real power is in being able to hook up all the templating,
| CMS APIs, and whatever else you want into your content pipeline.
| It's Just HyperText(tm).
|
| I'd go so far to say that if you're equally comfortable in
| HTML/CSS and InDesign, Pagedjs is a superior choice for long form
| layout.
| fifilura wrote:
| I can't help but feel like this is going full circle.
|
| CSS started with print media in mind since this was what was
| available at the time.
|
| Many of these features have been there since the inception. Just
| that browser support has been lagging.
|
| How do you break a table inside a float? Etc.
| account-5 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I've used https://github.com/cognitom/paper-css
| before for generating pdfs via the browser.
| bradgessler wrote:
| Browser support for printing is so bad that I'm going to have to
| create a native app for https://www.thingybase.com to have a
| streamlined workflow of printing labels to a thermal label
| printer.
|
| It works now, but first you have to download a PDF and print
| that. Google Docs does this too when you hit "Print".
|
| I've tried hacks like load the PDF in an iframe and use some
| JavaScript to print that, but then I get footers with the URL of
| the webpage, which doesn't work for my purposes.
|
| If you work on Chrome/Blink, Safari/Webkit, or Firefox/Mozilla
| please please please at least get the hacks working!
|
| A CSS standard would be great, but really I'd be happy if I could
| call a function like `windows.print("/document.pdf")` and have it
| print the PDF without all the footer/headers stuff.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I've worked with thermal printers and they are actually quite
| capable. They have drawing primitives that allow you to lay out
| basic graphics and the one I was working with even had basic
| font support. A native driver is definitely the way to go with
| these.
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(page generated 2024-03-03 23:00 UTC)