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How does one print the discussion thread (body and comments)?

rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭
in Vanilla 2.0 - 2.8

Seems like we hit another snag in our evaluation whether Vanilla would work for us -- I couldn't find a feature or a plugin to do it, but it may be buried somewhere...
Any ideas?

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  • hgtonighthgtonight MVP

    I am confused. The body and comments are printed by clicking on the discussion.

    Are you trying to access the body pragmatically?

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  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭

    I may be the one who is confused. Are you saying that there is no reason for a print button because Vanilla sets the discussion in such a way that regardless of the length of the body and comments, the native browser print function would allow the user to print the entire thread?

    If so (which is wonderful),then I'd love a pointer on how to add a print button to make it clear to our uneducated users...

  • hgtonighthgtonight MVP

    @rbrahmson said:
    I may be the one who is confused. Are you saying that there is no reason for a print button because Vanilla sets the discussion in such a way that regardless of the length of the body and comments, the native browser print function would allow the user to print the entire thread?

    If so (which is wonderful),then I'd love a pointer on how to add a print button to make it clear to our uneducated users...

    Ahhh. You want to use a printer to print a physical copy of the discussion. This never would have entered my mind. :)

    There is no good way to do this since discussions can have virtually infinite comments. I would suppose a plugin that produces a compact mode that lists Author, full date, and then the body for comments would be best. Then just crank the "per page" limit to something like 100.

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  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭
    edited June 2015

    @hgtonight wrote:

    Ahhh. You want to use a printer to print a physical copy of the discussion. This never would have entered my mind. :)

    There is no good way to do this since discussions can have virtually infinite comments. I would suppose a plugin that produces a compact mode that lists Author, full date, and then the body for comments would be best. Then just crank the "per page" limit to something like 100.

    Yea, I know, paper and all that stuff. I guess (actually I know) that the members of the proposed forum are not the typical forum users. It's a requirement of theirs, and one of the things Vanilla is evaluated against other technologies. Personally I like Vanilla and even took a stab at modifying two plugins (despite not being a programmer). But this is definitely beyond my time and capabilities (there is a difference between hacking a written plugin and writing something new).

    I am surprised though that there isn't such a builtin feature.

  • hgtonighthgtonight MVP

    You could increase the number of comments per page via the dashboard and use the print function of your browser just fine.

    Printing is not in the purview of the web-application. I could see maybe generating a PDF, but even that seems completely at odds with a living discussion.

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  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭
    edited June 2015

    @hgtonight - thanks for the tip to increase the number of comments per page. Do you know of a way to add a "Print" button on the discussion page (only)? That would seem to satisfy the requirement.

    BTW, your view that printing is at odds with a live forum is mostly correct. But specific discussions may become stable, and if they are of the "advice" nature (which will be the case of the contemplated forum) I can understand why someone may want to print them.

    And of course, printing may well go into a PDF file (such print-to-pdf drivers are common).

  • hgtonighthgtonight MVP
    Answer ✓

    You can do this quite easily as long as JS is enabled. AFAIK, there is no way to request the print dialog without it.

    I made an addon for you, but I can't upload it right now. So here it is instead: https://us.v-cdn.net/5018160/uploads/editor/8c/v5jqtj8rmphi.zip

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  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson ✭✭✭

    Wow! @hgtonight must stand for Highest Greatest Typers Oracles who works in the night for those daily low lifes who can't program;-)

    That was fast and to the proint. Thank you!

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