Re: Printing in a user agent

In UAAG1, printing seems to have been handled by the definition of 
viewport (which we have no changed in UAAG2 yet), which said:

"Viewports include windows, frames, PIECES OF PAPER, loudspeakers, and 
virtual magnifying glasses."

...but then in almost every instance of "viewport" in the document, 
replacing it with the words "piece of paper" doesn't make any sense.

So...I propose...

(1) We remove "pieces of paper" from the definition of "viewport"

and...

(2) Taking into account Jim's comments with a new success criteria for 
"Guideline 3.11 Help user to use and orient within viewports":

SC: 3.11.X Print Scale: If a print from viewport feature is provided, 
the user has the option of printing using the viewport's scale settings 
such that the user agent should attempt to *passively reflow* the 
content into the horizontal dimensions of paper. If passive reflow is 
not possible, more than one sheet of paper will be required horizontally.


ED. NOTES:
- by *passively reflow* I mean the kind of reflow that happens when you 
resize a window manually.
- do any languages favour horizontal over vertical paper flows?


Cheers,
Jan





Jim Allan wrote:
> A colleague asked how to easily print a web document in different sizes when
> the page author did not provide a printing style sheet.'
> 
> Depending on the browser and the authored content this can be as simple as
> choosing a font size (largest) or page scale and printing. The text wraps
> within the page margins, images move as needed, nothing is truncated. With
> other content, printing at other than author defined font size is near
> impossible from the browser. Sometimes, even printing at author default font
> sizes and layout results in content being truncated at the right margin.
> 
> Should a user agent repair a page and allow a user to scale a page, have all
> of the content wrap appropriately (within reason - I know this is soft -
> exact wording can come later), and print the print the page?
> 
> Jim 
> 
> 

-- 
Jan Richards, M.Sc.
User Interface Design Specialist
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC)
Faculty of Information Studies
University of Toronto

   Email: jan.richards@utoronto.ca
   Web:   http://jan.atrc.utoronto.ca
   Phone: 416-946-7060
   Fax:   416-971-2896

Received on Thursday, 1 May 2008 16:22:55 UTC