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CSS Paged Media Module Level 3

56 points by djoldman 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hellcow 4y ago
I absolutely love the first reply. "Depends on what you mean by 'soon'. Probably not this year." That was 18 years ago. That comment is old enough to vote.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Soon(tm).
ranting-moth 4y ago
An 18 year old bug. For comparison, Duke Nukem Forever took 14 years from announcement to release.
leecb 4y ago
Weasyprint is an excellent tool for converting HTML to PDF. It has supported CSS Paged Media Module for a while; this has been very useful for making printable PDFs from web pages. Weasyprint seems to be one of the few HTML->PDF engines out there that doesn't depend on a browser engine. It's impressive just how much works (HTML, CSS, SVG, etc), given that this is a relatively simple project compared to a full-featured browser. Performance isn't bad, considering it is implemented in Python.
- tehbeard 4y ago
  How well does it install on systems that don't run python web apps? (I.e. I have whatever python the distro comes with) Currently reliant on wkhtmltopdf for a few client projects, and while it works it has some.. Oddities that if I can, I'd like to get rid of having to remember.
  - bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
    Unfortunately wkhtmltopdf seems to be sunsetted... it's GitHub repo was archived in January and there don't seem to be any plans to move development elsewhere. When its version of WebKit becomes too old to be useful, that'll sort of be it :(
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  [dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ognarb 4y ago
Related discussion from yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35242299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35242299 There is some polifill for this spec https://pagedjs.org/documentation/ https://pagedjs.org/documentation/
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  Has anyone used the polyfill? I've written a book using HTML and CSS and it was mostly fine but adding page numbers turned out to be the painful part.
  - makkesk8 4y ago
    I've used it with much success, it works pretty well but there's a lot of quirks and gotchas, nothing major but it can be cumbersome.
encryptluks2 4y ago
I 100% think they should prioritize this. They've added a bunch of cool stuff to CSS, but half of it is useless unless they actually implement a standard document type of interface so that HTML can be used to create paged media.
TimTheTinker 4y ago
FWIW, Prince is the gold standard for producing PDFs from HTML/CSS/JS: https://www.princexml.com/ https://www.princexml.com/ It's a paid product built and maintained by Håkon Wium Lie, the original developer of the CSS language (and the former CTO of the Opera browser company).
8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
Are they making progress on this now? Every few years this comes up in my life. Have not been happy each time I've looked into it.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  Agreed. No movement on WebKit either: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85062 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85062
MilStdJunkie 4y ago
Welcome to my life. Let's tap dance from one implementation to another as we wait for an eighteen year W3C draft to get implemented. FlyingSaucer, prawn, itext, fpdf, PDFkit, pdftk, aaalllll the way to today: Paged.js, Weazy, and vivliostyle Yeah yeah yeah, I know. Prince is great. That's fine. My customers don't want to pay that kind of cash to make PDFs and I agree with them. Especially a feature that should have made it into browser core almost two decades ago. I long ago imagined a steamy scenario involving Adobe executives and W3C steering groups, but that back room orgy has grown to improbable durations by the current date.

56 points by djoldman 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

I absolutely love the first reply. "Depends on what you mean by 'soon'. Probably not this year." That was 18 years ago. That comment is old enough to vote.

Dalewyn 4y ago
Soon(tm).

ranting-moth 4y ago

An 18 year old bug. For comparison, Duke Nukem Forever took 14 years from announcement to release.

leecb 4y ago

Weasyprint is an excellent tool for converting HTML to PDF. It has supported CSS Paged Media Module for a while; this has been very useful for making printable PDFs from web pages. Weasyprint seems to be one of the few HTML->PDF engines out there that doesn't depend on a browser engine. It's impressive just how much works (HTML, CSS, SVG, etc), given that this is a relatively simple project compared to a full-featured browser. Performance isn't bad, considering it is implemented in Python.

tehbeard 4y ago
How well does it install on systems that don't run python web apps? (I.e. I have whatever python the distro comes with) Currently reliant on wkhtmltopdf for a few client projects, and while it works it has some.. Oddities that if I can, I'd like to get rid of having to remember.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  Unfortunately wkhtmltopdf seems to be sunsetted... it's GitHub repo was archived in January and there don't seem to be any plans to move development elsewhere. When its version of WebKit becomes too old to be useful, that'll sort of be it :(
encryptluks2 4y ago
[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ognarb 4y ago

Related discussion from yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35242299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35242299 There is some polifill for this spec https://pagedjs.org/documentation/ https://pagedjs.org/documentation/

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
Has anyone used the polyfill? I've written a book using HTML and CSS and it was mostly fine but adding page numbers turned out to be the painful part.
- makkesk8 4y ago
  I've used it with much success, it works pretty well but there's a lot of quirks and gotchas, nothing major but it can be cumbersome.

encryptluks2 4y ago

I 100% think they should prioritize this. They've added a bunch of cool stuff to CSS, but half of it is useless unless they actually implement a standard document type of interface so that HTML can be used to create paged media.

TimTheTinker 4y ago

FWIW, Prince is the gold standard for producing PDFs from HTML/CSS/JS: https://www.princexml.com/ https://www.princexml.com/ It's a paid product built and maintained by Håkon Wium Lie, the original developer of the CSS language (and the former CTO of the Opera browser company).

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago

Are they making progress on this now? Every few years this comes up in my life. Have not been happy each time I've looked into it.

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
Agreed. No movement on WebKit either: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85062 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85062

MilStdJunkie 4y ago

Welcome to my life. Let's tap dance from one implementation to another as we wait for an eighteen year W3C draft to get implemented. FlyingSaucer, prawn, itext, fpdf, PDFkit, pdftk, aaalllll the way to today: Paged.js, Weazy, and vivliostyle Yeah yeah yeah, I know. Prince is great. That's fine. My customers don't want to pay that kind of cash to make PDFs and I agree with them. Especially a feature that should have made it into browser core almost two decades ago. I long ago imagined a steamy scenario involving Adobe executives and W3C steering groups, but that back room orgy has grown to improbable durations by the current date.