1 Wow!

This article reminded me of Emeril AND showed me a great new way for displaying book content at the same time. That’s hard to do. Congrats.

posted at 01:31 am on November 29, 2005 by Sean Hall

2 Consider the Printer

Blatantly ignoring the point of the article, as a pre-press technician for a local printer myself, I would be crestfallen to receive a PDF such as the sample.pdf included with the article.

The pages have no corner trims and no bleed; the black text separates into CMYK leaving the black at only 90%. We would not be happy to go to press with this file, which highlights the pitfalls of using unsuitable tools for the job. I wonder if QuarkXPress will reliably import HTML and CSS? ;)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must find a suitable orifice for this 128pp Microsoft Word booklet.

posted at 04:39 am on November 29, 2005 by Alex Coles

3 Wrong Tool for the Job

Its nice that (X)HTML/CSS can be clobbered to produce an actual book but it really did make me wince that the ‘hacks’ you were using were already present in something that was designed specifically for this type of job.

Pretty much every is here:
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf

(La)TeX is expected when sending material to the printers, and if you ever have to publish work for a journal you must use LaTeX….

Sorry but (X)HTML/CSS really is not up to the job. Don’t re-invent the wheel.

posted at 06:59 am on November 29, 2005 by Alexander Clouter

4 Other option

I think it would be better to use an xml file with xhtml markup tags and a xsl fo stylesheet to make the pdf. Then u can use sans serif fonts for online and serif fonts for pdf files,swap images between 72 dpi and 300/600. Some tools also handle cmyk and metatags. Maybe in a near future we can even send along jdf info. Imo html and css is just to limited for decent use. I also think it is wrong to create new tags with print in mind. That way we end up with a lot of xml-sollutions that all do the same thing.

posted at 07:47 am on November 29, 2005 by yves peeters

5 Wrong tool, right tool

Sorry but (X)HTML/CSS really is not up to the job. Don’t re-invent the wheel.

It depends on the purpose of your document. If it is a document that is primarily to be distributed and read online, but with the option for people to print it if they wish, this seems like a perfect combination.

LaTeX is a relatively specialised product requiring non-standard tools – far more so than HTML/CSS – so for small users it may not be practical to use it.

Yes, for a major print job, a dedicated print tool such as PDF or LaTeX would be better – but this would then be unsuitable for screen reading. So if the document is not worth doing twice – once for paper and once for screen – HTML/CSS is probably the best way of producing a single format that works well in both media … and others (eg Braille, screen reader).

posted at 08:35 am on November 29, 2005 by Stephen Down

6 Table captions

The TABLE element has a CAPTION element, but support is spotty.

Advocating generic (X)HTML (with classes) over existing semantic elements demands more than a casual dismissal. I’d really like to see statements like this clarified (a link would suffice). I’m sure there are good reasons. Share them :)

posted at 08:37 am on November 29, 2005 by Ben Boyle

7 It may be the wrong tool for the job...

…But still it’s a great use of css to print webpages.

It shouldn’t be used as press-ready document. Of course not, XHTML was not designed for that, but to give documents structure. Yet, if you would like to make articles in your site available for download, this is a great way of “polishing” them into nice looking stuff :)

It may not be the “best” way to print a book. But it is a great way of printing webpages.

posted at 08:37 am on November 29, 2005 by Nicolas Sanguinetti

8 HTML and CSS, two of our favorite acronyms

Really nice post, I think not every body is skilled enough to use it now, but maybe in the future.

HTML and CSS, two of our favorite acronyms bq.
I always thought HTML and CSS are abbreviations, can any body tell me the difference between acronyms and abbreviations ?

posted at 09:05 am on November 29, 2005 by Abdelrahman Osama

9 Great idea, but not ready for large use

This is a great idea, one I’ve certainly never thought of using, but I don’t think it’s ready for use on large projects. Companies like Quark and Adobe shell out big bucks to produce programs that do the same thing, why not leave it to them? As others have mentioned, though, I hope these programs will have support for importing X/HTML and CSS in the future. The possibilities would be virtually limitless.

this raises one somewhat unrelated question though. How do you think users would react if the web began acting like print media, with numbered pages, simplified layouts, etc? I think it would simplify a lot of the processes average web users go through and it would be a little more calming to firt time computer users used to looking at newspapers and magazines.

posted at 09:05 am on November 29, 2005 by Kevin S.

10 CSS Wants To Play

I don’t think that at this point CSS is mature enough to fulfil a truly professional role in book-printing.

I do, however, encourage any attempt to make it mature, since anything that aims to lessen the gap between print and web is a Good Thing.

I would enjoy articles here on ALA that delve into the nooks and crannies of current CSS-printability, get out of it what they can and in turn bring shortcomings to light, because CSS-print is as dark a subject today as CSS itself was around 1998.

But it is a great way of printing webpages.

And hopefully, a great way of webbing print pages. ;)

posted at 09:29 am on November 29, 2005 by Willem Jeffery

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