RE: Printing in a user agent

I think it does come under accessibility requirements. User agents provide
mechanisms for changing the font-size of the content and adjust the content
(wrapping text and images) or viewport (adding horizontal and vertical
scrolling) as necessary. When printing (another viewport by definition) oft
times some of the content is not visible (right margin truncation in left to
right languages), and there is no way to recover/retrieve/view the missing
text. This is independent of the font size selected. User agents have a
'default' style sheet for rendering onscreen content. I am sure some style
sheet exists for printing, but it is not adequate, or I should say does not
provide an accessible experience in the absence of author supplied printing
styles. Even with author print style sheets the printing mechanism does not
allow for selection of font size and consistent presentation of relevant
content on the paper viewport.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Kelly Ford
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 5:58 PM
To: Jim Allan; 'WAI-UA list'
Subject: RE: Printing in a user agent


You are really asking two questions here:

The first is the specific question you've asked but to me there's an implied
second question which is does this come under the accessibility requirements
for a user agent?

Kelly



-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Jim Allan
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 3:29 PM
To: 'WAI-UA list'
Subject: Printing in a user agent


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

Received on Thursday, 24 April 2008 19:19:23 UTC