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Print to PDF has text cut-off between pages

P

petisjioweelsha

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 7, 2011
92
7
USA
I just printed this page to PDF in Safari and some of the text is cut-off between pages when viewed in Preview on 10.6.8

Any idea why this would be happening and what I can do to fix it.

Frankly, I am stunned at this sloppy result from modern OS.:confused:
 

Attachments

  • Hell with the lid taken off.pdf
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Well, hasn't been fixed in 10.7. It does print a little better if you print it from reader mode.

You might try another browser also.
 
Most likely if you printed to a printer you'd get the same cut-offs. It's the web page layout.

To make the preview document look like the web page in Safari create a custom paper size in the Print dialogue. Make the width 8.5" and the height 11" times the number of pages that would print out normally (i.e. 55" for a 5 page document).

If you use a paper length that is longer than you need you'll just end up with white space at the bottom of the PDF, so you could just estimate what the longest page height you need is and use that all the time for these PDFs.
 
BrianBaughn said:
Most likely if you printed to a printer you'd get the same cut-offs. It's the web page layout.

To make the preview document look like the web page in Safari create a custom paper size in the Print dialogue. Make the width 8.5" and the height 11" times the number of pages that would print out normally (i.e. 55" for a 5 page document).
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that create one long unpaginated PDF?
If I ever did want to print out that file later, wouldn't it just become a microscopic block of mini text squeezed onto a single page!?
 
petisjioweelsha said:
Wouldn't that create one long unpaginated PDF?
If I ever did want to print out that file later, wouldn't it just become a microscopic block of mini text squeezed onto a single page!?
Click to expand...
You need to get your brain around the fact that HTML is not page-oriented. The ePub format for electronic books is a superset of HTML. The page-oriented features of ePub do not exist in HTML and will not exist on any web site based on HTML. Some web pages offer "printer-friendly" versions. For the most part, these web pages have minimal to no graphics. If the web page is not advertised as "printer-friendly," then you cannot expect it to be. Even in the case of a printer-friendly web page, it is still possible that you will see lines of text split between pages in the hard copy.
 
I guess I just thought that the OS or the browser or whatever is printing the page to PDF would be able to paginate the output.

In terms of 'printer friendly' pages, I thought that the main purpose of them was to minimize clutter/ads. Do they actually use some special method to paginate the output?
 
As a long time self-appointed 'teacher' of computer stuff, I'll weigh in and offer you this explanation which is not technically exact, but I think may help you understand why this particular document is not printing properly:

- web pages are written in a language called html, where the content is described in a way that programs called 'browsers' can interpret. These browser programs then show the results of their interpretation onto the user's screen. Humans can then make the leap of turning the images on the screen into understandable information.

- PDF is a different way of describing what is represented on a page, and as such, it has it's own rules of telling when a page ends and the next one begins.

- Having a "Save as" function does not guarantee that the information will be delivered completely intact in the new format.

It takes well thought out technology to make the transition from one format to another, preserving the intent of the author and the readability desires of the audience.

I tried reading your pdf in my own favorite PDF program, and found that it is, indeed, formatted in such a way that there are gaps and that the page breaks that you observed on the screen are not replicated in the new document.

This doesn't help you with this individual file, but perhaps it will help your understanding.

Good luck!
 
Poor pagination of PDFs from browsers in Mac OS

I've struggled with this same problem for several years now. I'm mystified that I DON'T have this same problem when printing to a pdf on a Windows machine. Why can't the apple pdf writer handle what the Microsoft eDoc printer can?
 
Solved this issue

I had this exact same issue and was able to solve it using the print to PDF menu in the Opera for Mac web browser. All my other browsers cut off the bottom half of the web page, but Opera chunked it up nicely into 3 pages.
Way to go Opera!:cool:
 
petisjioweelsha said:
I just printed this page to PDF in Safari and some of the text is cut-off between pages when viewed in Preview on 10.6.8

Any idea why this would be happening and what I can do to fix it.

Frankly, I am stunned at this sloppy result from modern OS.:confused:
Click to expand...


Hi,

Any one has solve this issue?
 
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