10

I don't know how kosher this is for online forums and whether there will be green-erds cringing, but how about adding a feature to be able to print a question/answer or even an entire discussion? Of course, over on Math.SX, LaTeX formatting is interpreted to present mathematics (via MathJax) as graphics in order provide a nice graphic context. But we also upload our own images (LaTeX output of MWEs, and the like) and provide formatted inline LaTeX and code snippets.

A similar question over on Stack Overflow mentions StackPrinter, which also provides some sample Stack Exchange printable versions as a demo on Stack Overflow and Stack Overflow Meta. This is, however, not entirely integrated into Stack Exchange as far as I know. How about integrating it into the TeX.SX user interface?

Options I'm thinking of include adding that to the list of "actions" one can perform on questions/answers - link edit print close flag. This would work well for questions or answers. But what about if you want to print an entire discussion (question and answers). Well, how about somewhere in the Tagged / Asked / Viewed / Active part of the right sidebar? This answer also provides a nice view of a location for seeing a printer-friendly version of a post (question/answer):

Printer-friendly version of discussion

Opinions?

6
  • 3
    see also meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/825/…
    – Caramdir
    Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 4:32
  • 2
    I don't think that adding a print icon will ever happen. It essentially clutters the interface with an icon that most users will never use. Also from a business and community-building perspective its better to just use the link to refer to the page.
    – Caramdir
    Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 4:35
  • The Greasemonkey script from the answers you linked seems to be a nice way for providing that functionality though.
    – Caramdir
    Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 4:36
  • Thanks for the link - that didn't show up in my search query or subsequent suggestions.
    – Werner Mod
    Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 4:49
  • 1
    TeXPrinter, available at Sourceforge, does what you want. It's very easy to use and allows you to print out the entire thread to a LaTeX file or a PDF file.
    – DJP
    Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 19:42
  • @werner this greasemonkey script should do the trick. Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 19:49

3 Answers 3

20

Paulo Cereda has developed the awesome TeXPrinter for precisely this purpose. It's a Java application with a very clean interface that takes a question ID and saves the question thread as a PDF or a TeX file. There's a video explaining the usage.

3
  • 2
    +1 to Paulo's work!
    – user13907
    Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 19:06
  • Nice to discover about TeXPrinter.
    – Sigur
    Commented Dec 29, 2017 at 22:13
  • The project has moved to github.com/cereda/texprinter Commented Nov 21, 2018 at 3:04
6

The generic printing option Stack Printer covers the entire Stack Exchange network.

For this question:

enter image description here

the PDF output resembles:

enter image description here

2

I have created a Greasemonkey script that injects the following css (for print) :

@media print {
  * {    
    visibility: hidden;
  }
  #content * {    
    visibility: visible;
  }
  header, #left-sidebar, #sidebar, form, .bottom-notice, .comments-link, .aside-cta {    
    display: none;
  }
  #mainbar {    
    width: 100%;
  }
  div.post-text {    
    page-break-inside: avoid;
  }
}

The style is not perfect, but hide some of the content to make the page more print friendly.

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