Re: [Whatwg] Request for HTML-only print link

[Stijn Peeters]

Křištof Želechovski schreef:

href="print://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/" is no good; 
it asks the browser to find the resource using the print protocol. But 
the print protocol is for printing, not for finding resources; I 
imagine it could be used for finding out some printer configuration 
parameters (similar to the way printers with a network interface only 
can be configured) and to submit documents for printing, nothing more.

How about

<form

action="print://host_name/printer_name/?

href=&quo;http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/&quo;&amp;

palette=mono&amp;

copies=3&amp;

mode=draft,booklet&amp;

stapled=top" method="post" ><input type="submit" value="Print 
me"></form >? It feels better to me. Of course, the arguments would be 
interpreted by the browser, not by the printer, contrary to what the 
syntax suggests, but I think this problem is much smaller and I can 
swallow it in spite of being a purist.

The idea that a fragment can address a block element is quite 
interesting; in the old days a reference to #name would usually 
correspond to an anchor with the same name—and you cannot embrace a 
block-level element with an anchor. I think it is still common 
practice to put the named anchor around the section header and not 
around the whole section, which would require a division, not an anchor.

I did not want to say that printing is obsolete; I wanted to say that 
asking the customer to print is obsolete. Sorry for the 
misunderstanding. Your site should not lose functionality because your 
customer does not have a printer.

Cheers

Chris

A link of the format print://host_name/printer_name would never be 
feasible because on the server side it can not be properly guessed what 
the name of the printer and the server it is on (if any) on the client 
side would be. A theoretical solution would be somehow finding the 
printer's location via Javascript (though this is fundamentally 
impossible, as far as I know), in which case you could as well use 
javascript:print().

Besides, no such protocol exists, and defining it is as I pointed out 
earlier not in the scope of the specs the WHATWG is working on.

Regards,

Stijn