JBT.name

...A Place for Personal Communion with Me

Printing from JBT.name

If you would like to print a page from JBT.name, you have a number of options: printing from your browser directly, printing from a word processor or text editor, printing an exact replica of the entire page as it is displayed, or printing a custom page.

Printing from Your Browser

If you decide to print directly from your browser, I have a special section in my stylesheet which will take away the background coloration, page borders, extra whitespace, and Quick Links box automatically; this should provide you with what I believe to be the best and most efficient printout.

If the image of me on the top right of the page does not print, this is not due to my stylesheet, but to your browser settings. Likewise, if you want to remove the title of the page, URL, or other information that may get printed on the top and bottom of every physical page, this is also controlled by your browser. As my pages already contain the URL and the title is clearly visible anyways, you may save ink and have a better-looking document if you set your browser to not print these; depending on the intended use of your printout, you may or may not want my picture to show. In both Firefox and Internet Explorer, these settings can be accessed via File > Page Setup.

Printing from a Word Processor

The next easiest method to print from JBT.name is to copy a page into a word processor or text editor, format the document as desired, and then print. The advantage to this method is that you have a lot more control over certain elements, such as font, font size, color, page breaks, and so on. The downside is that you will probably lose a lot of style information in the process of this: printing from a browser will almost always give you results that more faithfully correspond to what you may see in your browser. However, if you're primarily printing out a big chunk of text, such as one of the liturgical services I've made available, this is probably the best and most customizable option.

If you do choose this option, I would recommend keeping the same font face I use, Arial, for stylistic reasons. I would also highly recommend one of two font size configurations (for page titles, subtitles, and text, respectively): 20pt/12pt/10pt or 24pt/15pt/12pt. These are the font size configurations I use when printing and they give me the best results.

Printing the Page as It Is Displayed

This is the second hardest method for printing one of my pages, but may be useful in some very specialized contexts. To do this, you need a program or an online service which takes a screenshot of my page, which you then print. Everything, including an enormous amount of green, will print this way; use this only if you need to!

Printing a Custom Page

This is the hardest and most complicated way to print something I've written, but it is the most powerful: download a copy of the page, the CSS file, and any necessary images. Once this copy is on your computer, you can modify absolutely anything and then print according to one of the other three methods. This requires knowledge of HTML and CSS, so I only recommend it for visitors with the requisite web development skills. If you do choose this method, please keep in mind moral rights: even if you use something in the public domain (like my works), it is generally illegal in almost every jurisdiction to either claim it as your own work or claim that a modification you made was the author's own work. Therefore, you should be especially sure that you clearly distinguish between what is my work and what is not.

Other Considerations

For visitors who are concerned about the quality of printed images, the measurement of the pixels per centimeter (ppcm) becomes quite important. As my images all have various resolutions and nominal sizes, it is important to take these into consideration and determine how you want to use the images. I recommend printing for most purposes at about 60ppcm (150ppi); this is what I would consider "fair" quality as it looks fine under most circumstances. For what I would consider "good" quality, print at the higher 80ppcm (200ppi).[1]

Even in more extreme cases, I don't think there would be a reason to go higher than about 120ppcm (300ppi); this "excellent" quality is about the theoretical maximum amount of visual information a person with 20/20 vision can see at 30cm (1ft).[2] Keep in mind that the image's ppcm is distinct from the printer's dots per centimeter (dpcm) and that the dpcm will need to be significantly higher than the ppcm for a printer to adequately reproduce a digital image; indeed, as I write this in 2012, when you're over 80ppcm (200ppi), the printer, not the original image, is probably the limiting factor and increasing the image's ppcm likely won't do any good!

Footnotes

  1. 1. Professional photographer Gary Gray has done a very helpful experiment with different quality prints and has come to a similar conclusion. See his test and discussion at http://www.have-camera-will-travel.com/field_reports/the_300_dpi_print_myth.html
  2. 2. Though his blog post is addressing Apple's Retina display, retinal neuroscientist Brian Jones does a good job covering the basics of what the human eye is capable of seeing at http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2010/06/apple-retina-display/

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