Comment on Save as PDF

Sanctus@anarchist.nexus ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Beyond that, also, what’s so hard about clicking on “Export As… > PDF” which is literally in the file menu on LibreOffice at the very least. I don’t know about MS Office, but I would assume it’s the same.

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  • Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It can produce different results than print to pdf unfortunately

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    • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Could you expand on that, I’m curious because export to PDF has always worked flawlessly for me.

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      • Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I was helping someone and both export and print to pdf messed up different minute aspects of the design/layout. I don’t remember what exactly it was tho

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    • WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Print to pdf generally loses the text and just makes it an image though. Which can balloon size and prevent ctrl+f without running ocr on it and saving an additional layer with more mistakes than the original.

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      • BanMe@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Are you sure you don’t have “print as image” enabled there? It should keep it as a layered PDF, not rasterizing.

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  • Railcar8095@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m going to assume you’re on the younger side. That’s a relatively recent thing. For many many years we had to install PDF printers.

    Also the PDF printer is generic, but the export has to implemented for each application individually.

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    • The_v@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      CutePDF was the best.

      cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp

      Started out with it in XP.

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      • BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Still using it today whenever I need to flatten a PDF with my scanned signature.

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    • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’m in my forties. The post we are talking about was made in 2026. Priyanka Lakhara definitely looks younger than me, didn’t even make her Twitter account until January 2024.

      What does age have to do with a post made… four days ago by someone who is either late twenties to mid-thirties at most?

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      • Railcar8095@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The age comment is not about the age of the posts, but about how you seem so surprised about printing as PDF rather than export as PDF.

        Using a virtual printer was the norm until relatively recently, and even then it’s still the most effective because anything than can print can use that to generate a PDF.

        That’s how I still create PDFs honestly.

        Didn’t want you offend, sorry if came out wrong

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  • Korne127@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Well, but we’re not just talking about Office. What about browsers, document viewers, etc.

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    • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      My browser saves PDFs fine?

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      • W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨38⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        How about notepad. Or paint.

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  • unknown1234_5@kbin.earth ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    oop probably meant from websites

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• TheRealKuni@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Kids today don’t realize how much “printing” to files your computer does.

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  • mech@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Just tell them it’s like the Share button on their phone.

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• rainwall@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This is as much linguistic tomfoolery for humans as it is a con for computers.

  I dont know the history, but the most likely case is some microsoft engineer implemented the “print as pdf” option to get around an adobe restriction in the far past, and now we have this weird convention where you “print” to only 1 filetype to “save” it.

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  • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Someone else pointed out that printing to pdf was a universal solution no matter the program. Instead of each program having to make their own export option.

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    • rainwall@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Thats not 100% correct. This didnt use to be an option, nor is pdf the default printing “format” used by printers. Thats more PCL.

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      • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        What? I’m saying it was added because it was independent of the program. You could print to pdf from anywhere be it word, or notepad, or tax software, or a browser, or whatever shitty proprietary program you had. Instead of waiting for each of those programs to add an export as PDF option. I have no idea what you misinterpreted that into.

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• tomiant@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  When you are saving it as a .txt file, you are printing it as a .txt file, the computer sees no difference.

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  • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Not how printing as pdf works but I appreciate the effort

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    • tomiant@piefed.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’m sorry but I am the head of printing operations at work and I can assure you, that is exactly how computers work.

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      • W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨37⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        Then you already know this:

        Image

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      • mech@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Can we get a second opinion from the head of saving operations?

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      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Oh! Apologies sir. I didn’t realize you were the one casting the printer summoning seances from that side of the veil. You know if you ever need support you can draw out the four runes on the back of the book.

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  • jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I haven’t looked at the printer driver interface on various different operating systens, but I imagine programmatically you don’t write ACSII text directly to it, the way you would with file io calls. Though on Linux you have “lpr” where you can pipe text directly to the command. It’s possible a printer could natively support this, but clearly it would be a different interface to render anything more complex than ascii text.

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• Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Err you are handing the file off to a pdf converter programm that acts like a print driver. So yes you are lying to your text programm

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  • lime@feddit.nu ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    pdf is a container format for code parsed by printers. there are no lies, just a virtual printer.

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    • oftenawake@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It is all imaginary numbers inside virtual computers which don’t really exist. Pdf is an intermediary portal to the physical realm, but beware! For it is one created by the dark forces of the human psyche. Not all is as it first may seem, it may unexpectedly take possession of the user! (Cue ominous music!)

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