[FX.php List] [OFF] printable very wide table?

[Joel Shapiro]

Hi Andrew

That's a clever idea.  Thanks!

I'll be testing the CSS page-breaks once I can dive back into this  
project.  If it's not near-foolproof, I'll be going w/ PDFs.

Thanks all,
-Joel


On Dec 14, 2010, at 6:15 PM, Andrew Denman wrote:

> Joel,
>
> It sounds like you’re on the right track.  Since browsers won’t  
> print the full horizontal dimension of the page if it’s too large,  
> you have to go to PDF, Excel/csv, or use tricks.
>
> The one trick I came across that might work for you is breaking up  
> the columns into separate page-width-size tables (height doesn’t  
> matter) and making the screen-only CSS render them as ‘inline  
> tables’.  This will make them appear on the screen next to each  
> other instead of on top of each other, but when it prints they will  
> be on top of each other and you get all of your data (you will want  
> a CSS page-break after each table to make sure each one starts on a  
> new page).  The only caveat to this is you must have a consistent  
> row height and column width or the separate tables won’t line up  
> horizontally (row height) and columns could be cut off of pages  
> (column width).
>
> Andrew Denman
>
> From: fx.php_list-bounces at mail.iviking.org [mailto:fx.php_list-bounces at mail.iviking.org 
> ] On Behalf Of Joel Shapiro
> Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 7:19 PM
> To: FX.php Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [FX.php List] [OFF] printable very wide table?
>
> Hi Webko
>
> I think we've got a mis-connect somewhere... ;-)
>
> Let's take your example at http://apachescricket.com/table.php
>
> It's clearly too wide to fit on one printed page, so I believe it  
> would need to be broken down into a "list" of "sub-tables" so that  
> it can print from a browser.  Since the columns in your example are  
> so wide, we'd probably want to print just one column per page.  So  
> my quest is to find the best way to print column1 on page1, col2 on  
> p2, etc. -- and make sure that when all pages are printed, the user  
> could line up the pages left to right and recreate the table.
>
> Without reliable page-breaks, I don't think this is possible.  Maybe  
> the CSS page-break-after will work here.  Otherwise, I'm back to  
> creating PDFs.
>
> Or tell me I'm still missing something :-)
>
> Cheers,
> -Joel
>
>
> On Dec 14, 2010, at 4:34 PM, Tim 'Webko' Booth wrote:
>
>
> Dear Joel,
>
> You're right about row height.  I hadn't expressed my concern well.   
> My concern really was printing the same rows consistently page after  
> page without reliable page breaks.  I'm worried that if I try to  
> 'fudge' page breaks by div height, then at some point a user might  
> get rows 1-35 on pages 1-3, but then page 4 might be only rows 1-34  
> and then page 5 would be row 35, then a gap, & then rows 1-34-ish.   
> (Or is there something I'm not getting?)
>
> As each row must be exactly the same height all the way across the  
> page, no matter how wide, it should print reliably.
>
>
> I hadn't known about the CSS page-break-after property, so that  
> might be a good solution.
>
> Then again... as I think about it even more...  I'm wondering now if  
> a user's browser is set to "scale to fit", then if one page has  
> fewer columns than another, might one page scale differently than  
> other pages, or would all pages print at the same scaling per print  
> job, regardless of indiv page widths?  (scaling differently probably  
> *would* grow or shrink row height).  I'd hope each print job would  
> be consistent across all pages, but is that something I can trust  
> across browsers, OSes, and moving into the future?
>
> It has to print each row at the same height - rows do not change  
> heights halfway across or anything...
>
> Of course, it wouldn;t take long to test this - except it looks like  
> my browsers won't print a plain table to full width - I was trying  
> to use http://apachescricket.com/table.php as an example, but it  
> only wants to print Col1...
>
> Cheers
>
> Webko
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