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Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

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Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#61

Post by alok-g »

baoyu wrote: post #34

The point about “text is too big” is really, really strange—using 12pt in print is okay, but you should never use it for a screen—everyone's reading from the screen from a much bigger distance, and resolutions are getting higher and higher.

I frequently see texts in prints though, especially headings, that start overlapping with other things around. This seems way more common than what I would like. Once in a while, believe it or not, all the characters print on the top of each other for headings. All this is such a mess.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#62

Post by hagbardgroup »

alok-g wrote: post #57
hagbardgroup wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is because most web media is awful for reading. Column widths are standardized in print, magazine, and books for a reason: to minimize eye movement required. The larger that web screens get, the broader the column lengths often are, which forces more eye movement, which causes eye strain, which requires vision interruption, which impedes reading comprehension. Smart phones are great for short articles be…

This was insightful. Thanks. Readability with paper is better even without columns though. Also, since I do majority of my work on big desktop screens, positioning with respect to the body also could be impacting. Using bigger fonts on-screen helps, though does not work out on many websites designed with small fonts.

You're welcome. Yes wrt paper being better even without professional layout.

I didn't really start to get these things until doing some print work after years of being internet-only.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#63

Post by ggchappell »

onli wrote: post #3

The premise is questionable. A webpage lives in its own medium, or it is its own medium. It is normally meant to be read with an electronic device, to be interactive and linked, though those devices can be quite different of course. But by printing a webarticle, you are transforming it into another medium, onto paper. Therefore it is actually a very strong assumption - and one I don't follow - to "expect them to supp…

The writer is talking about articles, as he notes in his first sentence. The problem he points out is part of a larger problem: that web content clearly intended to be read, is often presented a context that makes reading inconvenient or difficult.

If someone posts an article on the web, I don't think it's too much to ask that the article be presented in a way that enables it to be read conveniently. Good print formatting is part of that.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#64

Post by zokier »

thangalin wrote: post #53
justincormack wrote: post #48

There is a CSS/HTML rendering engine for print, PrinceXML http://www.princexml.com/ - it is extremely good quality. It is not open source, but does fill a niche gap. If you need to produce quality pdf output from a single source it could be worth looking at. (its also interesting in that it is written in a functional logic programming language..., and that it is a small Australian startup)

ConTeXt also provides an XML interface. Unlike PrinceXML, ConTeXt is open source. The community is quite friendly. I've been using it for a couple of years now to produce PDFs from a single source. In my case, I first transform the XML into ConTeX code using XSLT, a step that simpler systems might not require. http://wiki.contextgarden.net/XML

Based on quick look, ConTeXt requires you to handle an unholy mixture of XML, XSLT and TeX (and maybe even Lua?), whereas PrinceXML last I checked was just (x)HTML+CSS.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#65

Post by wycx »

zorbo wrote: post #14

I personally don't care that much about most articles being printable, but if you're making any kind of material that is supposed to be studied, please, please make sure it's properly printable. Doing research / studying a topic is something that is still infinitely easier to do on paper IMHO. Having said that, does anybody know a decent web-based app for researching stuff? What I definitively need is: * Ability to h…

Check out Zotero.

It is primarily a reference management suite, but it can do some of the things you require.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#66

Post by onli »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #44
onli wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I feel misunderstood. I'm perfectly fine with using different devices and different presentations. But changing mediums is stronger than just changing the device or the presentation. The web has an underlying vision that can't be transported to every medium: > He [Tim Berners-Lee] kicked off by explaining what he means by the two words "semantic" and "web." Underlying the Web was the philosophy of a navigable spa…

I don't understand. Paper can't navigate but you don't need navigation. Why can't the underlying vision of everything except navigation work just as well?

The web is more than a place to read an article like on paper. It is a place where articles (ressources) have their own URL and are linkable, sometimes even in both directions (think of trackbacks and pingbacks, following the vision that was way more prominent in the beginning, or xanadu). You need navigation for that, it is essential for what the web provides.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#67

Post by ef4 »

romey wrote: post #42
ef4 wrote: post #30

Unfortunately, printed media support in CSS still sucks. I have a web app that needs to generate printable official documents, and it's really not possible to do a good job with CSS. I resort to generating PDF in Javascript, which is laborious and duplicates a lot of effort. My biggest gripe is the inability to control the header and footer and the inability to sanely specify where page breaks are allowed.

"page-break-inside: avoid" and "page-break-after" seem to work fairly reliably, as long as you aren't doing too much weird stuff with positioning, floats, etc. Three major problems I've had with printing from HTML is 1) It seems that the different browsers have different default margins, and the outside margins aren't controllable from CSS 2) The javascript print dialog doesn't give any sort of feedback...it just blo…

I fought with those and eventually gave up, because their implementations were either broken or missing in the browsers I was supporting. But that probably 18 months ago now. Maybe they have improved.
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