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Printing Wide Web Pages?
dmayle asks: "I'm an origami folder, and I have some diagrams stored as web pages on a cd. I'd like to print them out (since folding in front of a computer monitor is not the easiest of tasks), but the web pages have all of the steps laid out horizontally. I've tried using Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, and even IE (on a windows platform), but I can't seem to find a printing engine that can handle wide web pages. Am I missing something? Hasn't anyone ever tried to print wide web pages before? What I'm asking is: Do you folks know of any utilities (or browsers) that I've missed that can handle printing wide web pages?"
Why not just edit the HTML so the steps are laid out vertically?
A stupid question was asked and posted by an editor. Everyone (at this moment) giving the correct answer is moderated down as Flamebait.
Is this an all-time low for /.?
...or are Ask Slashdot questions slowly degrading to crap?
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Try turning your printer sideways - there were some monitors that could do this.
They want a page printed like (pipe is the page's edge)
1,2,3,4 | 5,6,7,8 | 9,10,11 | 12
and not jumbled like
1,2 | 5,6 | 9,10 | 12
3,4 | 7,8 | 11
The former can be joined together and the content will still be readable across the page.
Horizontal printing is about continuing sentences and content across all 4 pages before making a line-break, when you return to the 1st page again. I wouldn't do this for text but for diagrams it makes a lot of sense.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
How about doing a screen capture of your browser and printing the image with gimp or some other paint program?
Can't the pictures just be downloaded seperately and then printed with a proper photo program?
I'll go out on a limb here and guess that these are webpages with a mix of text and images? If so, it'd be nice to print them out as webpages, instead of printing out the separate photos.
Did ask Slashdot just become tech support?
Tech support is, "this is broken, how do I fix it?" This question is, "there doesn't seem to be any browser capable of printing wide web pages, does anyone on slashdot know how to do this?"
"And like that
This is the most pathetic response to an ask slashdot ever.
Like half of the people have suggested "landscape" when it's pretty obvious that's not what the guy is asking about. He's got a page that's like ten screens wide. Printing in landscape will give him maybe another half-a-screen of width. The question is: How to get the next eight screens of width?
The only thing I can think of on this one would be to somehow render the HTML page in PostScript (or eps). I don't know what out there would do that. Once you have PostScript, it should be pretty easy to make the printer do what you want, even if it means rotating it 90 degrees so it's on its side.
If someone could post a link to a nefarious page-widening post that would be cool, too. I can't see them anymore since I stopped using IE.
Save it as a PDF. Easier if you're in OS X but MS Word can probably do it as well. Then print landscape on a large format poster/banner printer.
Some Epsons and HP's can print unlimited length or very long 'banner' sized images on rolls of paper.
Take your PDF to Kinkos and have them do it for you.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Try browsing Slash at -1, and you'll see plenty of wide pages. Shrink the window doesn't help.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Windows 2000 offers fit-to-page printing for anything. I don't know if Win9x offers such a thing as I've never needed it at home, and of course I'm not using Windows at the moment so I can't check it out.
Anyway, I don't think it's an IE thing but rather an OS/driver thing.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
A very nice tool for converting HTML to PDF is "HTMLDoc". It's GPL'ed. The HTMLDOC home page is located at http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc. It's not clear to me that it will really meet your needs, but if not, it may be possible to modify it to do what you want.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
- File -> Print Preview
- Click the radio button for "Print Wide Pages"
- There is no step 3. There is no step 3! =)
This will force the printer to tile out-of-bounds content in all directions, so that a web page 3 screens wide and 2 screens deep will print as:+---+---+---+
| 1 | 3 | 5 |
+---+---+---+
| 2 | 4 | 6 |
+---+---+---+
All this hinges on you having access to a Mac, of course. Can't really help you there. *cough*
This is a 3 step process and likely more than you were after. I suspect you were hoping for a, "Gee, just use this obscure browser parameter." instead. Anyway here goes:
1 - Print to a custom page size using a PDF writer or "print to file". I was able to print to an A3 size Postscript file just using Mozilla for Linux. I could also generate a custom page up to 45 inches wide using an old Adobe PDF writer under Windows. I was also able to scale the output to get much more on a page. The scaling trick will work quite well even to very small scales for text and lines but will not work for raster images. If you only have raster images then simply save them individually and print them from Gimp.
2 - Manipulate the file in a graphics application. A vector based application like Illustrator or Corel Draw will work best (sorry I don't do much drawing so I don't know the Linux equivalent - Sketch?, Kontour?) for rotating and scaling. I was also able to use Gimp to import my mozilla.ps file at a high res (600 dpi) and achieve acceptable results.
3 - Print the file at whatever scale, in whatever chunk configuration you like.
if you have acrobat installed you can just print to distiller of PDF maker and then you can size the pages accordingly in acrobat when you go to actually print the pages.
MoRe... LaTeR... -=PJK=-
I seem to recall circa 1993 Acorn A3020's being able to split printjobs up like that...
I'm actually rather surprised that modern machines can't >:(
two steps forward, three steps back and all that.
One of the points of HTML is supposed to be that it does not care how wide the display device is. But I keep finding pages that are set up so that they can only be printed in landscape on US letter lest the text fall off the page. Poor design.
/. karma).
:o)
But to answer the question:
Use a printer driver for an A0 postscript plotter and print to file. I have exactly that set up, and can't see why it shouldn't work (but I am not going to print an A0 copy of goatse for
Hmmm... I just created an A0 poster of Theo de Raadt using IE... now there's a troll.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
That's what I do when having problems with Internet Explorer printing. You have to make sure to select optimize for compatibility in the properties.
This is just another variation on the suggestions offered by others. If you want to print at full size on a normal printer, you can print to postscript in the browser, then run the postscript through poster, which will break it into pages that you can print out and tape together.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.