Printing Forum posts ?

[Rob Manchester]

Hello Martin,
Is there a facility to print topics or parts of them from the forum ? I have several folders ( the kind that sit on the shelf beside me ) into which I put useful info regarding the use of Templot. I have many of the Companion articles in there as it just seems easier to flick through when I need some info. I also have some forum posts from the old forum in them which, if I remember correctly, I just highlighted the required parts and pasted them into a text editor for printing.

I can't seem to do anything similar with the new forum. I can't scroll and mark text to copy it. Using 'Ctrl+A' to mark everything produces a result of sorts but the formatting isn't very user friendly. Any tips ?

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

Is there a facility to print topics or parts of them from the forum ?

I can't seem to do anything similar with the new forum. I can't scroll and mark text to copy it. Using 'Ctrl+A' to mark everything produces a result of sorts but the formatting isn't very user friendly. Any tips ?

Rob

@Guinea_Pig_Tester

Hi Rob,

A forum topic is just an ordinary web page, so what you can do with it depends on which browser you are using. Copying and printing from a browser was traditionally known to be iffy and used to depend on the daily price of kippers.

But using Firefox on Windows 10 everything now works just fine. I can't speak for other browsers. I can copy text by highlighting it (drag the mouse over it), then CTRL+C to copy it in the usual way. Then paste it wherever you want. If the place you paste it accepts HTML it will appear with the formatting intact. Otherwise it will be plain text.

But it is probably much easier to print the topic page directly from the browser. That's usually at File > Print... in the browser, or CTRL+P.

The forum software will rearrange it slightly for easier printing, and Firefox lets you select which printed page(s) you want. You can scroll through the Preview to see them.

Before printing a topic, you probably want to click the Export topic option:

This causes the topic to be displayed in simplified form as a single very long page suitable for printing. A multi-page topic may take a while to load.

This is Firefox's Print dialog:

If you prefer, on Windows10 you could select Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer, to create a PDF file instead of a paper print. (Similar virtual PDF printer programs are available for earlier versions of Windows.)

By the way, in Firefox there is also View > Enter Reader View, which displays any web page in a format for easier reading, and will read it aloud to you if you wish. (On here it's best to do Export topic first.)

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hello Martin,
Thank you very much for the above. The 'Export Topic' was the key that I was missing. Using that it works just fine.

....and yes I am still on Windows 7

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

@Rob Manchester

Hi Rob,

Returning to this topic to add that there is now a print post icon on every post:

This permits the printing of a single post rather than a full topic.

The post appears in a simplified format suitable for printing. Below it there is a Print button which opens the browser's print dialog, to print normally, or create a PDF file.

At present that icon doesn't explain itself if hovered over -- I will ask the author of this add-on to fix that.

cheers,

Martin.