[GRLUG] print to file from web page inconsistent results

[Eric Beversluis]

On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 12:46 +0000, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Eric Beversluis
> <ebever at researchintegration.org> wrote:
> > Here's something that I've wondered about for a while:
> >
> > (Using Linux and Firefox):
> > I often like to use the print to file option to capture webpages as pdf
> > or ps (another feature that M$ chooses not to include--at least not the
> > option to print to a useable format).
> 
> re Windows...Check out the CutePDF printer driver. It uses Ghostscript
> to provide a PDF printer target driver on Windows. Also, the Fireshot
> Firefox extension is nice, although I don't think it supports PDF, and
> it sadly doesn't run on Linux.
> 
> >
> > But while everything normally works nicely, with some webpages only the
> > first (print) page or so of the web page gets printed to file. What I'm
> > wondering if this is just something flukey that happens (it seems
> > consistent--if I try again to print that webpage I get the same result)
> > or if there's something in how the webpage is coded that's causing that.
> > (I'm talking about printing the actual webpage as it appears, not the
> > sometimes-available 'formatted for printing' option.)
> >
> > Does anyone else have this experience or happen to know the reason why?
> 
> There are at least three possible reasons I can think of.
> 
> First, CSS supports providing different rules for printing (even
> without using a separate 'view printable form' link). Perhaps the
> websites in question are leveraging that. (I beleve
> Wikipedia/MediaWiki does, for example)
> 
> Second, it may be an aspect of Javascript. Perhaps part of the page is
> populated after load, or after a mouseover event, or something like
> that.
> 
> Checking Print Preview will help catch those two cases. I remember
> that browsers _used_ to download a wholly fresh copy of a page when
> they wanted to print, but that memory goes back to Netscape 4.x and
> Mozilla. I don't know if/when that changed.
> 
> Third, it's possible that there's something quirky going on inside
> your printer driver or PDF.  IIRC, CSS supports commands for
> delineating pages, but I'm not certain.
> 
> -- 
> :wq
> 
Thanks. Those seem likely possibilities. I'll check them out as the
occasion arises. And will look into CutePDF for Windows, since I need to
be often on Windows and it's a pain to go back to Linux and find the
same page so I can print it to file.


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