Our technology choices were so primitive. And here in the 21st century I’ve done a fair amount of HTML to PDF generation. I’ve even created ebooks with them. It was fun to live in a time when things were so unformed.
From comp.infosystems.www.misc, the question thread, from March 20, 1997:
Anyone have a decent way to print a web page? I’d like to get a nice color printout including background images and such.
Printing it from NS or IE leaves out the backgrounds and doing a screen capture results in unsatisfactory output.
Any other ideas?
My answer, from March 21, 1997:
I've done this - but it requires some work:
1. Load up the page in your browser how you like it.
2. Do a screen capture
3. Crop the non essential parts of the screen capture.
4. Print out the result.
5. Done.
NOW! I hear you saying, "BUT JOE, THESE PAGES ARE TOO LONG?!?!?"
Chill monkeyboy ... listen up...
1. Load up the page in your browser how you like it.
2. Do a screen capture of the top part...
Scroll down...
Do another screen capture...
Scroll down...
Do another screen capture...
(you see where I'm going here).
Repeat until done.
Add honey glaze (DOH! that's my girlfriend's ham recipe!)
2a.Load up your favorite paint program (like Photoshop or some wannabe Photoshop), open each image and tile/splice them into one image)
3. Crop the non essential parts of the screen capture.
4. Print out the result.
You should be done now.
That's how I've done it, but there may be other opinions.
The issue of HTML --> PS to relaibly print from the web is still open, as far as I know.
