Custom page width when saving as PDF with Sorter?

Here’s one:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2022/07/crimes-against-transhumanity.html

Page looks fine on Safari Reader and Mercury Reader plugin for Brave. Not readable when clipped as PDF in DevonThink—font is too small and when I zoom the page, the column becomes too wide.

I was working on a project yesterday requiring consulting multiple websites, where I swear this problem was coming up quite a bit. But now I look at the pages I was consulting yesterday, and they look fine. Type is small but I can increase zoom and the result is very reasonable, so I’m satisfied. Maybe the problem was not in the software but rather between my ears. :slight_smile:

I’ll keep on looking into this and work on reproducing the bug. I can recall encountering this problem frequently in the past but I know that you need to be able to reproduce it

Thanks! We’ll see if we can’t coax it into any misbehavior. :wink:

1 Like

Using the DEVONthink “clipper” extension in Safari:

  • As a Markdown file … looks good
  • As a 1 Page PDF Clutter-free ON … small fonts, Sans Serif Font. comments excluded
  • As a 1 Page PDF Clutter-free OFF … smaller fonts. Serif Font. comments included (so the page is longer)
  • As a Paginated PDF Clutter-free OFF – looks great. Serif Font. comments included
  • As a Paginated PDF Clutter-free ON … looks great. Sans Serif Font. comments excluded

I went to my Menu → Preferences → Icon Files → Tab Multimedia and for the above “PDF Display” was set for “Single Page Continuous” and “Automatically resize” check on. [I don’t remember ever changing that]

I changed “Automatically resize” to OFF, and re-ran the 1Pg PDF tests:

  • As a 1 Page PDF Clutter-free ON … larger fonts that above. Sans Serif. Commens excluded. Looks good to me
  • As a 1 Page PDF Cluttter-free OFF … larger fonts than above (slightly). Serif Font. Comments included. Looks as expected to me.

FYI, I’m not sure this a bug and is a remanent of how Charlie has formatted the web site, or the software to create the 1Page PDF is forcing all the text onto 1 page, so of course it uses a smaller font. Complicated.

Unless Markdown doesn’t work, I always save pages like this (mostly text) as Markdown to make the file smaller AND I can control the reading font size.

Attached are all the files zipped up.

Archive.zip (2.3 MB)

1 Like

DEVONthink doesn’t change fonts on its own if clutter-free is disabled, that’s completely handled by the WebKit and the web site. And especially In case of single-page PDFs the size depends also on the zoom.

Anyway, does the hidden preference DisablePreprocessedClipping improve the results?

Thanks … I’ll let @Mitch_Wagner and @jeffvogelsang pick up any more testing from here. I’m happy with Markdown for these sorts of pages, and I’m ok with getting inconsistencies in PDFs from web pages that are “all over the place” on how they render. I was just curious about the assertions, and my testing shows that I’m still not bothered, but thought I would report it to save time.

2 Likes

I am impressed by @rmschne’s thorough testing here, and grateful. Thank you!

Another problem page:

Clipping with clutter-free unchecked looks fine. Font’s a little small but zooming solves that problem, so I have no complaints.

Clipping with clutter-free checked results in the problem I described above: Fonts are too small, and lines are so wide that if I zoom the page to readable size, the lines extend well past the edge of my display, so the page is STILL unreadable.

Trying again, with clutter-free checked and “automatically resize” unchecked: The resulting page looks the same, to my eye, as the clutter-free unchecked version—which is fine, actually, because that page just doesn’t have much clutter on it.

Later, I’ll try another test on a site with more advertising on it.

Thanks!

Another test, with a Wall Street Journal article. This one is an excellent test here—it shows PRECISELY the problem I’ve been discussing, and it’s on an important site too:

When clipped with clutter-free checked, the font is too small to read, and zooming results in line widths too wide to read. Either way, unreadable!

As before, when clutter-free is unchecked, it’s usable.

Here are my settings:

And another:

https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/post/announcing-oracle-database-service-for-microsoft-azure

When clipped with clutter-free on, I actually got a blank page—just a headline and link .

Second try, clutter-free on: Font too small, zooming font results in line length too wide. Unreadable.

Clipped with clutter-free off is readable if I zoom the text. However, the lines go from edge-to-edge—so that’s barely a fit.

all that is being demonstrated is that the internet is a wild place. :wink:

2 Likes

For PDF single-page with clutter-free ticked, and “automatically resize” turned off in Settings, I still get wide PDFs that spill off the right side of the viewer inside DT. In the clipper, when I press Preview, I get exactly what I want.

Turns out the default width is 1920pt, so I just set the PDF Clipping Width to 600 (instead of automatic) and got what I wanted.

and “automatically resize” turned off in Settings

This is unrelated to the width of a clipping.

Also…

The pixel width used is in the title.

Please provide a problematic URL as it’s clear this isn’t a global issue.

Can’t provide links in my post for some reason. Check out www_asktheheadhunter_com/resume-blasphemy

If you try it with no clipping width set vs. 600 pt, you get either a 1920pt wide PDF or a 600pt wide PDF.

612pt is width for 8.5"x11" so I’m cool with that.

Are you getting a mostly blank PDF when setting it to 600 or 612 points?