[whatwg] window.print() when printing is not supported

[timeless]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Olli Pettay <Olli.Pettay at helsinki.fi> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> currently
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/timers.html#printing
> says that window.print() should prompt user to print the page, but that "For
> instance, a kiosk browser could silently ignore any invocations of the
> print() method."

I don't think silently ignoring is the right behavior.

the right behavior is offering the user a script frozen interface to
that window with a way to 'resume'.

Printing is basically "pause the great scary web". That it happens to
kill a tree in the process is not interesting.

As a user of a kiosk with a digital camera, being able to press a
print button, use my digital camera to take a picture, scroll the page
some more, take another picture, and keep doing this until i'm done
"printing" is the correct behavior.

When I'm done, i should click "done" (= close print preview).

Kiosk implementations should be encouraged to implement this.

If they don't want to implement this, they can do whatever they like,
but anything else is a disservice to the unfortunate kiosk user of a
page which does:

y=window.open(x)
 y.print();
 y.close();