Mark non-printable objects

Some items on the page should not be printed. For instance: broadcast messages, search input forms, and so on. A new CSS class twikiDoNotPrint can be used to identify those objects to be made invisible in the print style sheet.

-- Contributors: ArthurClemens - 10 Nov 2006

Discussion

I instinctivly disagree with this proposal. I'll try to work out why, but here's a start

1. some twiki's may use BROADCASTMSG to make that the web is secret, or the state of the data, or some other thing we didn't think of
2. why mix printing instructions into the non-print skins? wasn't that what the print skin was created for?

or is this proposal to hide things that go into the print template, when in actual fact they shouldn't? in which case, it sounds a little like a hack, in which %IF{'skin eq print'}% feels like it may be more appropriate.

right now I'm making too many guesses - Arthur, can you fill in more details please?

-- SvenDowideit - 10 Nov 2006

Perhaps my proposal was not clear. The print skin already hides a number of page elements: the left bar, the top bar. But the topic will always be shown. The proposal is to give elements in the topic the "do not print" CSS class so they will not show up in the print template. For example: the "modify search" form on the search results page just adds clutter to the print page and it can be removed when marked with class twikiDoNotPrint.

( I have changed the name twikiNoPrint to twikiDoNotPrint)

-- ArthurClemens - 10 Nov 2006

The syntax %IF{'skin eq print'}% cannot be used to conditionally display blocks of HTML because any newlines will break the output.

-- ArthurClemens - 27 Nov 2006

I've been wanting to propose something like this myself in order to mark content that I put in the body of a topic which I don't want to print. One example would be a comment box. I would also like to format the edit links for MultiEditPlugin and EditTablePlugin to be hidden in print view.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 27 Nov 2006

Two interpretations of the goal

• Provide extension developers with the ability to easily identify aspects of their extension to result in rendered content that should not be printed when using the printview template or a print skin.
• Provide a tag to the user to mark sections of the topic as not to be printed when using the printview template or a print skin.

The former sounds like a great idea, and certainly, there are many elements introduced by extensions that should not print, such as those highlighted by Lynnwood. The latter is less obvious, and certainly should not involve just CSS (it might require a %STOPPRINT% and %RESUMEPRINT% tag).

P.S. Note how again the change in pattern skin from ?skin=print to ?template=printview hurts the ability to reuse solutions across skins.

-- ThomasWeigert - 27 Nov 2006