HTML Printing Problems
Dave Yost’s HTML Printing Test
Can you get this page to print properly?
Is there a browser that can print this document properly or is there a conversion path from HTML to PDF that works correctly?
As of September 21, 2005:
- Camino 1.0a1 WORKS - almost. There is a problem with the background color on pages 2, 4, 5, 6.
- not Mac OS X Safari, Opera
As of June, 2003:
- not Netscape, Mozilla, iCab, OmniPage
- not Mac OS X GoLive 6.0.1.
- not Windows Opera 7.11, IE6.
- not Acrobat 4, 5, 6, or Create Adobe PDF Online.
- not FrameMaker 6 HTML import.
- not WebWorks Publisher HTML Import (can’t do nested tables).
I'm writing a long document with lots of tables and illustrations. I'm using HTML because
- The open HTML/CSS file format gives me control I can't get with opaque file formats such as Word
- I can edit the HTML/CSS by hand if needed
- Tables work rationally
- Styles work well
- HTML is of course web ready without extra work
- I have an excellent editor for HTML: GoLive 6.
The problem is with printing (onto letter-sized paper). All paths I know of from HTML to the printed page split tables across page breaks.
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Figure 1.
Do the vertical lines between characters print? Does the blue background print? Camino gets these right. |
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| Figure 2. This is here for spacing. |
This paragraph is inside a
<div style="page-break-before: always">
tag, as specified by the CSS2 standard, so this paragraph should be at the start of page 2. (I can manage without this feature for now.) Mozilla and Camino get it right! See Printing Webpages - FAQ, page-break-before.
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| Figure 3. This is here for spacing, but it is probably split if the above paragraph was not at top of page. |
The problem for which I have not yet found a solution is that tables split across pages. The CSS2 standard says “CSS2 does recommend that user agents observe the following heuristics (while recognizing that they are sometimes contradictory): ... Avoid breaking inside a table.”
So the question is this: is this next table split across the bottom of this page and the top of the next?
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| Figure 4. Is this table split across pages? |
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| Figure 5. This is here for spacing. |
Let’s try again with this next table. It is inside a
<div style="page-break-inside: avoid">
tag, as specified by the CSS2 standard, so this paragraph should be at the start of a page. See Printing Webpages - FAQ, page-break-inside.
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| Figure 6. This table explicitly asks not to be split. |
Just so this document won’t be entirely free of useful content, here is a word from a key founding father of our modern age:
For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of truth; as having a Mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the Resemblances of Things (which is the chief point) and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their Subtler Differencies; as being gifted by Nature with Desire to seek, patience to Doubt, fondness to Meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of Imposture. So I thought my Nature had a kind of familiarity and Relationship with Truth.
—Francis Bacon, "Of the Interpretation of Nature" 1603-4
http://Yost.com/computers/html-printing-problems - this page
2003-06-19 Created
2005-09-21 Modified