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Is there a better high fidelity, printing friendly format with viewers available for all major platforms out there? PDF has a lot of flaws, but what’s the alte

Is there a better high fidelity, printing friendly format with viewers available for all major platforms out there? PDF has a lot of flaws, but what’s the alternative here? Word .DOC files are proprietary, RTF files are too limited, and HTML allows for too much variation between browsers and looks like garbage when printed.

jvanderbot 3y ago
> HTML allows for too much variation between browsers and looks like garbage when printed. Yeah, nowadays. But it's pretty simple to print just text pretty nicely from a website.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >But it's pretty simple it really isn't. Depending on what you display your text with the results may look very different depending on the platform. 'Portable' is in the name for a reason, the big advantage of pdfs is that they'll look the same everywhere.
  - tiffanyg 3y ago
    ... they'll look the same everywhere. Hahahahhahhahahhahhahahahha ahhahahhaha ... ajajjjajjajaja... Look, I'm laughing so hard, I suddenly turned Spanish*. Lol. That wasn't true in the late 80s and 90s, and it isn't true today. The reasons are different, and PDF does allow a lot of control, PLUS, PDFs undoubtedly DO look "the same everywhere" to the degree of "fidelity" you're implicitly assuming (and, to be fair, the degree that is most important in this kind of casual discussion), but, my experiences with PDF and "same everywhere" (including across types of media) lead to uproarious laughter on the outside (and crying and gnashing of the teeth on the inside *<:o) ). * j is so close to h in qwerty, mashing the keys = suddenly Spanish (where jajaja is often used / sensible with "soft j")
  - DANmode 3y ago
    But will they be able to execute the same malicious code everywhere?! (No, they will not.)
- lockhouse 3y ago
  > But it's pretty simple to print just text pretty nicely from a website. That hasn't been my experience at all. I've had to resort to taking screenshots or copying and pasting text from websites into Word to print something actually readable.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  I do not know what browser you are using, but both Chrome and Firefox are extremely bad at printing. Using the "reader mode" to print "just text" works on some sites, but on other sites it loses essential information from the original page or formats the text in such an inappropriate way that it becomes very hard to read. The "reader mode" is intended to be read loudly and not as an aid for printing. What is needed is a print command that renders the page exactly like on the display, instead of rendering it for printing in such a way that much of the text becomes obscured by various junk.
presbyterian 3y ago
An HTML version for web viewing, a PDF for printing.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  That's double work, especially considering that browsers have built-in native PDF viewers these days.
  - presbyterian 3y ago
    It’s not double work, it’s the proper amount of work to do the task you (should) want to do: share information in an accessible way. Also, there are a billion different ways you can create decent HTML and a PDF from one source.
    - DANmode 3y ago
      The "Save" dialog in any browser, is a good example.
      - lockhouse 3y ago
        Save results in the often terrible browser printed output.
      - presbyterian 3y ago
        They're saying that because browsers render the HTML/CSS differently, the prints wouldn't look good. I don't think this is necessarily true, but even if it is, CSS lets you style the print version of a page directly so that the print looks good, and you can even make it look like a normal document and not a printed web page
- Modified3019 3y ago
  PDFs allow for easy and portable saving, sharing, and generally also searching, all in a single file that will always have a consistent presentation. Reasons not to use HTML - HTML files generally have load of external calls to css and javascript that don't allow for making clean single files as is. - Reality has proven that webdev will not to put effort into making saving pages cleanly viable. Expecting otherwise is fragile thinking - Even if you go above and beyond the standard user and use a browser addon for saving webpages as a single file, this doesn't always work out as formatting generally becomes fucked in some way, sometimes severely. - Often straight up a mandated requirement. - HMTL links will always rot, but a government document faxed, photocopied, faxed again, and scanned into a PDF file spread haphazardly across a dozen university and legal archives is forever Summarizing the results of some government project is a perfect use case for PDFs.
DANmode 3y ago
> HTML allows for too much variation between browsers and looks like garbage when printed. Disagree. Serve it how you want the user to see it, but don't stop the user from choosing their own formats for comfort or accessibility afterward.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  Or just use PDF where it will look nearly identical everywhere, even in print. Not everybody has time to test multiple browsers to make sure content actually looks good across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, plus their mobile counterparts. Oh, and make a nice looking PDF on top of that. PDF is perfectly fine for distributing a paper. In fact, I’d say it is the preferred means for most people.

jvanderbot 3y ago

> HTML allows for too much variation between browsers and looks like garbage when printed. Yeah, nowadays. But it's pretty simple to print just text pretty nicely from a website.

Barrin92 3y ago
>But it's pretty simple it really isn't. Depending on what you display your text with the results may look very different depending on the platform. 'Portable' is in the name for a reason, the big advantage of pdfs is that they'll look the same everywhere.
- tiffanyg 3y ago
  ... they'll look the same everywhere. Hahahahhahhahahhahhahahahha ahhahahhaha ... ajajjjajjajaja... Look, I'm laughing so hard, I suddenly turned Spanish*. Lol. That wasn't true in the late 80s and 90s, and it isn't true today. The reasons are different, and PDF does allow a lot of control, PLUS, PDFs undoubtedly DO look "the same everywhere" to the degree of "fidelity" you're implicitly assuming (and, to be fair, the degree that is most important in this kind of casual discussion), but, my experiences with PDF and "same everywhere" (including across types of media) lead to uproarious laughter on the outside (and crying and gnashing of the teeth on the inside *<:o) ). * j is so close to h in qwerty, mashing the keys = suddenly Spanish (where jajaja is often used / sensible with "soft j")
- DANmode 3y ago
  But will they be able to execute the same malicious code everywhere?! (No, they will not.)
lockhouse 3y ago
> But it's pretty simple to print just text pretty nicely from a website. That hasn't been my experience at all. I've had to resort to taking screenshots or copying and pasting text from websites into Word to print something actually readable.
adrian_b 3y ago
I do not know what browser you are using, but both Chrome and Firefox are extremely bad at printing. Using the "reader mode" to print "just text" works on some sites, but on other sites it loses essential information from the original page or formats the text in such an inappropriate way that it becomes very hard to read. The "reader mode" is intended to be read loudly and not as an aid for printing. What is needed is a print command that renders the page exactly like on the display, instead of rendering it for printing in such a way that much of the text becomes obscured by various junk.

presbyterian 3y ago

An HTML version for web viewing, a PDF for printing.

lockhouse 3y ago
That's double work, especially considering that browsers have built-in native PDF viewers these days.
- presbyterian 3y ago
  It’s not double work, it’s the proper amount of work to do the task you (should) want to do: share information in an accessible way. Also, there are a billion different ways you can create decent HTML and a PDF from one source.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    The "Save" dialog in any browser, is a good example.
    - lockhouse 3y ago
      Save results in the often terrible browser printed output.
    - presbyterian 3y ago
      They're saying that because browsers render the HTML/CSS differently, the prints wouldn't look good. I don't think this is necessarily true, but even if it is, CSS lets you style the print version of a page directly so that the print looks good, and you can even make it look like a normal document and not a printed web page
Modified3019 3y ago
PDFs allow for easy and portable saving, sharing, and generally also searching, all in a single file that will always have a consistent presentation. Reasons not to use HTML - HTML files generally have load of external calls to css and javascript that don't allow for making clean single files as is. - Reality has proven that webdev will not to put effort into making saving pages cleanly viable. Expecting otherwise is fragile thinking - Even if you go above and beyond the standard user and use a browser addon for saving webpages as a single file, this doesn't always work out as formatting generally becomes fucked in some way, sometimes severely. - Often straight up a mandated requirement. - HMTL links will always rot, but a government document faxed, photocopied, faxed again, and scanned into a PDF file spread haphazardly across a dozen university and legal archives is forever Summarizing the results of some government project is a perfect use case for PDFs.

DANmode 3y ago

> HTML allows for too much variation between browsers and looks like garbage when printed. Disagree. Serve it how you want the user to see it, but don't stop the user from choosing their own formats for comfort or accessibility afterward.

lockhouse 3y ago
Or just use PDF where it will look nearly identical everywhere, even in print. Not everybody has time to test multiple browsers to make sure content actually looks good across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, plus their mobile counterparts. Oh, and make a nice looking PDF on top of that. PDF is perfectly fine for distributing a paper. In fact, I’d say it is the preferred means for most people.