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Public area => The Pub => Off-topic => Topic started by: xrunner on June 14th, 2013, 01:49 AM

Title: The "Print" function
Post by: xrunner on June 14th, 2013, 01:49 AM

You know - the button at the top of threads. Do you think anyone ever uses it? For some reason it came to mind this evening when changing a board description on my forum.

I see it's still around. If it's useful, I think the name should be changed to something else.

Like "thread dump" :) or a better name.

I'd be interested in your thoughts about "Print".

Title: Re: The "Print" function
Post by: Arantor on June 14th, 2013, 01:52 AM

I draw your attention to http://wedge.org/pub/7541/print-page/ and the conclusions drawn therein. I still think it should be a plugin though I just haven't gotten around to actually doing anything about it.

Posted: June 14th, 2013, 01:50 AM

Mind you I would note that my comment about parse_bbc's insanity (reply #7 in that thread) is no longer applicable; Nao and I since rewrote how parse_bbc is called so that's not an issue.

Title: Re: The "Print" function
Post by: xrunner on June 14th, 2013, 01:59 AM

Well shit - that's what happens when I get lazy.

Looks like it's come to your attention then. Like the one guy said, "I've never printed anything from that function in 15 years". Even if you kept it, it always seemed to have a dumb name. I mean who's going to "print" a whole thread? Save it maybe ...

I guess you can merge this with the other one - or delete my ramblings.

Title: Re: The "Print" function
Post by: Arantor on June 14th, 2013, 02:14 AM

Nah, there's no real need to delete it :)

Gotta remember also the longevity involved in this stuff; SMF 1.0 had print page - back in 2003-4. I kind of want to speculate that even YaBBSE had it (which puts it back to 2001-2) but since YaBBSE's own site is actually running SMF on the sly[1] back when the intarwebs were a very, very different place.

For example the notion of a 'print friendly CSS layout' as suggested in that thread just didn't exist.[2] So it was needed in the application rather than some kind of catch-all.

I don't even think the code has significantly changed in SMF in that time, thinking about it. Other than the necessities (db_query -> $smcFunc) it is probably the same or almost the same. I might if I get bored do a comparison.

So yeah. I think this is another vote for 'getting out the bone saw'.

1.	Yes, it's actually running SMF these days though SM LLC allowed SleePy to modify the footer to not say SMF... this is back in the pre-BSD days where altering the copyright was a no-no. But since Lewis Media handed the rights to the LLC, it was allowed.
2.	CSS 3 didn't exist. Neither did HTML 5. Hell, Firefox was only just emerging back then. I still remember Netscape Navigator upon which Firefox was originally based. Those were the days.

Title: Re: The "Print" function
Post by: Wanchope on June 14th, 2013, 12:12 PM

Quote from xrunner on June 14th, 2013, 01:49 AM

You know - the button at the top of threads. Do you think anyone ever uses it? For some reason it came to mind this evening when changing a board description on my forum.

I see it's still around. If it's useful, I think the name should be changed to something else.

Like "thread dump" :) or a better name.

I'd be interested in your thoughts about "Print".

I agree with you and as Arantor said, it can just be a plugin and somebody like me will not go near it.