Loss of content in print output when printing to PDF {Vivaldi forum page}
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Hi, the Print to PDF feature is great, and fast. 5*!
However I used it to save copies of my tax return as I was filling it in and now (too late!) I notice that on some pages - only some - data on the right-hand edge of the 'paper' is missing. My guess would be about 2 or 3 cm has been lost (if it was a real paper page). The actual web pages are forms with boxes to fill in; it's possible the actual width in pixels changes from page to page. Too late to check now.
Is this an issue of scaling? I chose the correct page format (A4) and left the other parameters as default. It feels like I need a scaling option "Fit to printing margins" or something. The option to choose a scaling percentage doesn't really help because I wouldn't know what to choose, and it would be tedious for doing every page.
Any advice welcome. Thanks.
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@megadyne Ah, I've been meaning to whine about Print to PDF for months now, but it is probably too complex to fix. Most of the problems I see are due to the algorithm including page elements that get overlaid on any segment of the viewed HTML document on every page of the print document - without allocating additional space for them. Headers, footers, right margin controls or ads or added spacing, all end up mixing with or hiding the main content I wanted to save.
In your right margin case, you might be able to scale the page small enough that the added junk doesn't cover your desired content - it will give you a nice preview of whether that will work. But usually I have to scale it so small the result isn't useful.
In my more frequent header/footer case, there is no solution - every print page gets all the garbage overlaid, no matter how small everything is scaled. Sometimes it actually loses track of the real content and leaves gaps of missing content between print pages.
The Save as mhtml function almost always saves the same pages properly - but in a larger file that most browsers can't open. It doesn't have to decide where the superimposed page elements should be drawn...
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Hmm, thank you. For web pages that I want to keep an accurate record of (like tax forms) it looks like I'll revert to doing screen shots, even if that is a bit tedious when the pages are longer than the screen.
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@gwen-dragon
No, I don't, sorry. I can't even reconstruct that particular event; I definitively submitted my tax return, and when I go back to look at it I only see the final result formatted as a traditional (paper) tax return form, i.e. it's not the web-form I use to input the data. I probably could go back to that input form but at the cost of reopening my tax declaration, which I am reluctant to do because it signals that there are 'errors to be corrected'.My question was posted in the hope that this is a known issue, and that there might be a simple solution or workaround, or choice of parameters that I had missed.
(As an aside, the reason I want to make detailed records as I go, is that there are literally hundreds of boxes and choices on the forms and I only need to use a handful, which are not always easy to find, and depend on choices I make at the start. The final result only shows the handful that I actually fill in. So each year I record which boxes to tick, where to put the data, etc., so that next year I can do the same. Unfortunately the lost data included quite a few boxes I had ticked/filled in. Never mind, I can start again from fresh next year.
Oh joy.) -
@gwen-dragon
MSF Pdf printer doesn't seem to work well; I have used Bullzip in the past but was pleased to find Print to PDF when I switched to Vivaldi on my new laptop. Most of the time it works really nicely and I haven't reinstalled Bullzip.
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@gwen-dragon said in Loss of data when printing to PDF:
normal webpage of your local tax office
Not exactly sure what you mean by that; there is a single (national) website for completing tax declarations which it is more or less obligatory to use (there are exceptions, but rare, and diminishing). So it is the unique, official site and very comprehensive - hence the large number of choices and data entry points.
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I suppose one simple workaround would be to systematically choose landscape rather than portrait when I'm recording that sort of web page. It has some minor downsides but might save the data. I'll try it next year!
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@gwen-dragon said in Loss of content in print output when printing to PDF:
Perhaps you tell in which country
France; form 2042 (the main declaration) but it's not every page, only some, towards the end, specifically the section to state if there have been any renovation works to improve insulation. There is a list of annexes in the LH margin which means the web-form looks as if it has a wide LH margin; but this can't be the whole reason, because some pages print OK.
(Got to go offline for today ... )
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@gwen-dragon
Thanks for your interest and the conversation. -
@gwen-dragon said in Loss of content in print output when printing to PDF:
Thanks for making clear, now i know you printed a webpage.
Perhaps the print feature of Vivaldi has a bug, but that is not easy to test as it is a site for payers only.You can see a tiny example on this forum page (or at least I can...):
If you look at the very bottom of that preview page, you see the box with "1 out of 14" superimposed on the first line of one of your posts. It should only appear at the very bottom right of the tab, in the same position regardless of your scroll position within the tab:
If that was a complex multi-line footer like many web pages use, it would not look so trivial.
Also notice how close the "about 13 hours ago" appears to the end of your already overwritten line. If I had not scaled the print page to 75%, that would be covering your line.
Scale back to "Default" and add the complexity of composing this post, and you get chaos:
Looks like it has superimposed both sides of the composition section over each other and over the continuation of the original page.
That's the kind of mess I get when trying to save complex online order confirmations assembled from a maze of items and costs and address fields and "you might want to add this" images. Or tax forms...
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More clues:
Not sure why, but when I tried that again, it made the previously superimposed
footer into a taller section with an opaque background, hiding the actual page content:
Switching to a physical printer, it still puts the silly footer on every print page, but at least it expands the actual content downward so it all gets printed:
Maybe this doesn't happen for other Vivaldi users? Hard for me to believe there isn't a storm of complaints...
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@gwen-dragon I have:
Vivaldi 3.8.2259.37 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Revision 969a5dcecc42e57accf29e2ad0e97114bb534b98
OS Windows 10 OS Version 2009 (Build 19042.985)But this problem has been similar for months or years.
Changing Letter/A4, margins, header/footer, Print to PDF or Microsoft PDF or PrimoPDF all move the spots where page elements conflict, but all leave some problems visible somewhere.
To be fair, Chrome has a similar problem, but the conflicts appear in slightly different places:
As does Firefox (in a different place, of course):
Clearly you can't look for any of the exact same glitches I've captured when you test on your system. Look at each page transition, I bet you'll find one where some content is hidden by the footer!
I guess either there is no standard for making complex pages printable, or most developers of complex pages ignore it?
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To add my 2-centimes' worth this morning, I just tried Print To PDF with this forum page, like @lorenamelang, and yes I get content lost behind the bottom margin on several, maybe most page breaks. It seems to have a problem when comment breaks coincide with page breaks.
Same with A4 or Letter format, increased top and bottom margins and with personalised scaling to 90%.
This might be a very dumb question: could the screen resolution have an effect? (mine is 3840 x 2160).
Vivaldi 3.8.2259.40 (Stable channel) (64 bits)
Révision 21d32d011fe9cba63d5249ab2137447979a7a6ce
Système d’exploitation Windows 10 OS Version 2004 (Build 19041.928). -
@megadyne
Just updated to the latest minor revision ( ...42) - same problem.This from the print preview :
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@gwen-dragon said in Loss of content in print output when printing to PDF:
Please update to 3.8.2259.42 and check again
Yes, I did that this morning. (my comment above)
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@gwen-dragon said in Loss of content in print output when printing to PDF:
I reported this forum issue to Vivaldi webadmins ..
Issue appears in Firefox, Edge, Vivaldi and Chrome.
So it is not a Vivaldi bug.Thanks.
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@gwen-dragon said in Loss of content in print output when printing to PDF {Vivaldi forum page}:
Issue appears in Firefox, Edge, Vivaldi and Chrome.
So it is not a Vivaldi bug.Agreed. But it happens quite often, on any complex web page with marginal page elements.
The same exact page does not hide content if I switch the same print preview to target a physical printer. There it will often use a whole sheet of paper to print a right margin page element in-between the pages of main content. And usually a real printer will leave most of a page blank to avoid splitting a large image, moving it all to the next page, while in a PDF it will split the image and then slap a footer through it.
It looks like print stylesheets are a thing:
https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/using-css-for-print-media-pdf/5612/15And you can remove page elements that will mess up your printed page...
Well, you might get rid of the elements that don’t have any use on print, like the submit button and search field. Also make sure the content spans the full width of the paper: you can do that by giving all containing elements the following code: #container, #container2, #content {width: 100%; margin: 0; float: none;}But I'm not finding any such CSS in this forum via DevTools. And often some sidebar in a purchase confirmation page is the important part I want to save!
Seems like the best simple solution would be for pdf output to look just like physical printer output - everything printed in sequence, even if it wastes lots of pdf space. Much less of a waste than the extra physical paper! And that must be under the control of the browser...
Maybe Vivaldi could have a new brag line - our Print to PDF actually works!
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@lorenamelang My Vivaldi prints nicely the contents from a web page. But what it doesn't Print to a Destination "Saves a PDF' is the HEADER & FOOTER information. I have checked and un-ckecked until my fingers a checked out. There is no option to choose the URL address to be in the header or Footer, as well the date and the page counts. I get nothing. Have never had this issue in Firefox..
anyone have a fix?
ArgyleBill n Texas -
@argylebill Header and Footer is saved in PDF 4.1 Stable and 4.2 Snapshot - Win 10 x64 21H2.
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@doctorg I am not knowingly running Snapshot 4.2. But here is what I am running:
Vivaldi 4.1.2369.21 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Revision 65da8ddfd900d72e3ff8802da65c27b6e9996a54
OS Windows 10 OS Version 2009 (Build 19042.1165)
JavaScript V8 9.2.230.29
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/92.0.4515.159 Safari/537.36So how does Snapshot 4.2 help in putting the URL address in the Header or Footer area, as well as the Page counts and date? Just not familiar with Snapshoot and what it does and does not do.
Thanks for the reply,
ArgyleBill n Texas
