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All restaurant menus in PDF are examples the complaint relates to. The less common case of actually printing a menu is well served by applying a print specific

by cmurf 6y ago

All restaurant menus in PDF are examples the complaint relates to. The less common case of actually printing a menu is well served by applying a print specific css. There's no advantage of PDF in this case, a menu doesn't need any of the additional sophistication that PDF brings.

larrik 6y ago
Unless they want to use the same PDF on the website that they send to the menu printing company. There's no way you are going to order menus from a printer and tell them to "print my webpage".
- cmurf 6y ago
  In fact you can, it's been this way for over two decades. W3C has been working on CSS and SVG print for that long expressly for cross-media print rendering needs.
  - larrik 6y ago
    You can but I wouldn't
crazygringo 6y ago
To the contrary. Restaurants create a "source of truth" menu that they print for use on-premises, often daily for seasonal fine dining. That is going to have layout. Why is the restaurant going to go to the trouble of creating a second HTML version? I've found that often, when a restaurant has an HTML menu on its site, it's months out of date because it never gets updated. PDF menus always that are the same as what customers are getting at their tables, please.
- cmurf 6y ago
  This is due to the disconnect in web vs print disciplines. They have a print oriented designer do the menu, and use PDF for print and for web. But invariably on a mobile device it downloads a persistent PDF file, and has a net negative experience as a media type, size is always more bloated than HTML/CSS equivalent not least of which is due to the embedding of fonts in the PDF and superfluous print quality resolution images. The restaurant industry is poorly served by having these disciplines separated. It's been possible to do high quality printed output with HTML/CSS for a decade if you have a web designer familiar with it, but sadly too many aren't and so the restaurant has the menu done by a traditional print designer.

by cmurf 6y ago

larrik 6y ago

Unless they want to use the same PDF on the website that they send to the menu printing company. There's no way you are going to order menus from a printer and tell them to "print my webpage".

cmurf 6y ago
In fact you can, it's been this way for over two decades. W3C has been working on CSS and SVG print for that long expressly for cross-media print rendering needs.
- larrik 6y ago
  You can but I wouldn't

crazygringo 6y ago

To the contrary. Restaurants create a "source of truth" menu that they print for use on-premises, often daily for seasonal fine dining. That is going to have layout. Why is the restaurant going to go to the trouble of creating a second HTML version? I've found that often, when a restaurant has an HTML menu on its site, it's months out of date because it never gets updated. PDF menus always that are the same as what customers are getting at their tables, please.

cmurf 6y ago
This is due to the disconnect in web vs print disciplines. They have a print oriented designer do the menu, and use PDF for print and for web. But invariably on a mobile device it downloads a persistent PDF file, and has a net negative experience as a media type, size is always more bloated than HTML/CSS equivalent not least of which is due to the embedding of fonts in the PDF and superfluous print quality resolution images. The restaurant industry is poorly served by having these disciplines separated. It's been possible to do high quality printed output with HTML/CSS for a decade if you have a web designer familiar with it, but sadly too many aren't and so the restaurant has the menu done by a traditional print designer.