Re: [PLUG] Web Pages Look Different on Screen and Printed. Why?

[Lynn Bradshaw via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

To get the initial matter out of the way, printers are basically like Warhammer 40K Chaos dæmon engines and they seem to have a will of their own entirely, and said will doesn't often benefit the user.

What I will add is that printers typically understand PostScript and/or PDF files and will obey instructions in these Turing-complete languages. Browser responsivity is out the window. These languages will just make letter paper printouts look nice (maybe, hopefully). Maybe AI will kick in at some point to buck the trend but it isn't today.

On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 9:55 PM Casey Bralla via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:

This has been an growing annoyance for me.

I see a web page and try to print it, but the printed output often is
wildly different from what I see on the screen.  I've read that there is
a separate CSS for printing, but I don't understand why.

Why doesn't a browser render the print output the same way it renders
the screen output?  The dimensions of the paper and the screen may be
different, but those differences are trivial compared to the gawd-awful
print output of some web pages.

What the heck is going on here?

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