Printing Wide Web Pages? 71
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?"
Landscape (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Landscape (Score:2, Insightful)
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 /.?
Re:Landscape (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Landscape (Score:2)
I'm actually rather surprised that modern machines can't >:(
two steps forward, three steps back and all that.
Huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Did ask Slashdot just become tech support?
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
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?"
Re:1: No such thing (Score:2)
its HTML, edit it... (Score:1)
If you can't do HTML try one of the many WYSIWYG editors (Frontpage et al, bleurgh).
Otherwise, post links to the pages - it'd be pretty trivial to knock up a script to do it for you...
Re:Slashdot Gripes 1.01 (Score:1)
Uhmmm.. (Score:2)
Is it just me... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:2)
/. is going for page hits.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:1)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:3, Insightful)
grr, i'm off topic. it just pisses me off when idiots slam a topic just because they don't care about it or already know the answer. if you don't care, don't read it. and if you already know the answer.. post it, for christ's sake.
phew. bedtime for this cranky girl, i think. heh.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:2)
I just checked out your webpage and I must say it's an awesome design- very nice color scheme and easily navigated layout.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:1)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:1)
Hmmm.... (Score:2, Funny)
Landscape? (Score:1)
Or a continuous feed printer in landscape mode, and the paper width set to the width of the page?
ZOOM!! (Score:1)
OR
Open it the pictures in Paint Shop Pro (excelent program, free evaluation) and got to print set up and select landscape and fit to page
Just get a mac. (Score:1)
Dunno why the PC version, which is so much faster with a better DOM, is like the worstest ever at printing.
P.S. I love using "worstest".
Re:Just get a mac. (Score:2)
Anyway, I don't think it's an IE thing but rather an OS/driver thing.
"Landscape" (Score:1)
-sid
screen capture? (Score:2)
Re:screen capture? (Score:1)
uh, i think you missed the obvious solution... (Score:1)
... just buy a bigger monitor dude. Then it'll all fit on one screen. Trust me.
Duh! (Score:1)
Pathetic (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Pathetic (Score:2)
As Larry Wall says of Perl "TMTOWTDI"
Anythng as long as it's landscape US letter (Score:2)
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.
hmm... (Score:1)
PDF plus poster/banner printer. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Hmm. (Score:1)
Too bad there isn't a built in way to do it though... But from a programming standpoint it doesn't seem like it should be too hard to in software just rotate the whole page 90 degrees and send it to the printer.
HTMLDOC converts HTML to PDF (Score:2)
This is easily done on IE 5.2 for OS X... (Score:5, Informative)
+---+---+---+
| 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* [apple.com]
Use a custom page size and ps/pdf (Score:2)
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.
Print to PDF then print to fit or edit from there (Score:2, Informative)
what was he asking again? (Score:1)
Get a REALLY LONG piece of paper (Score:1)
Alternatively, you could actually try using your brain to figure it out as opposed to asking such a totally lame question.
This is a printing system issue. (Score:1)
It is not an issue unique to web pages. It is a potential issue for printing from any application.
Five years ago, when I was an avid user of Acorn RiscOS computers [riscos.com] I had a neat applet which solves this problem for printing from any program. (I can't remember the name, and I have done a search).
What it did was to setup a virtual printer that could print arbitrary page sizes by printing tiles through a real printer.
The user would select what size paper they wished to emulate (A1, A0, etc or arbitrary dimensions), and the real printer to print through. The user would then press print from their application. The applet would create and print the tiles, with crop marks etc.
At the time I found the application quite useful, and found it easy to print out A2 or larger posters from any application, through my humble laser jet, and then paste them together.
I am quite surprised that there is no similar feature in CUPS, as IMHO, it would be relatively straight forward to implement, especially for GDI printers, and would be genuinely useful.
Print to file (postscript) then use ghostscript (Score:2)
poster (Score:2)
Good Question (contrary to others) (Score:1)
Of course, a web page is meant to be rendered in a browser and printing is a secondary consideration for most. Some material just has to be printed - for legal, archival purposes, for usefulness out on the shop floor by machine operators, etc.
I've encountered the problem often. The extremely wide web pages are typically generated by a database (for example, SAP (accounting) reports, HUD material) or converted spreadsheets.
HUD (US Housing and Urban Development agency) uses specific tags in their database generated web pages and a tool (HTML Scissors - http://www.faico.net/hscissor/) to split the pages up into printable chunks. The tool works, albeit the solution is imperfect.
The better solution that several have mentioned is to print to PDF and manipulate that. If you have Adobe Acrobat (the Writer) or Distiller, that works.
The last is to import into some HTML editor and reformat it. This requires the most effort, and, if the material is many columns of numbers, can be difficult to see if you've bolixed something up.
Other than the Mac IE print to fit feature, I have not found a simple solution - and would like to myself.
Re:Good Question (contrary to others) (Score:1)
You can then print the HTML document scaled to paper size using Adobe Acrobat.