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Virtually every web page contain information that is only usable
while browsing the website. In contrast importation informations are
lost while printing, Hyperlinks for example. Web2printer closes this
gap and transforms every web page in a printer-friendly manner. Fully
i18n support, use web2printer in your language!
Web2Printer
is the first and most powerful printer-friendly Open Source Software
Open today. Based on the Java 5 EE Platform it is easy to install,
simple to manage, and reliable.
Prerequisites
Web2printer based on the Java 5 EE Platform:
- Servlet API 2.5
- Java 5
- Jetty >= 6.1 or Tomcat >= 6.0
Getting Web2Printer
Web2Printer is distributed under the BSD License with sourcecode includes. Download from here
Functions
Web2Printer works online, real-time. There is no need to define a
second, "hidden" page. Just put a appropriate hyperlink in your
document.
Web2Printer generates a meaningful page footer, to preserves the origin and navigation information.
The footer contains:
- The page url
- meta tags author and copyright
- a hyperlink cross reference
- a image cross reference
- images replaced with alt="" tag
With web2printer you can easily clip the web page content to the
print relevant part i.e cut of menus and ads. This embed the relevant
part into two html comments:
<!-- start main column -->
every thing between this comments is transformed in a printable manner
<!-- end main column -->
The html comment text can be configured!
Web2Printer comes in two editions:
Servlet: For integration in existing web sites on cms systems which not relay on Java 5 EE. Drupal or Joomla for example.
Servlet Filter: For seamless integration into a existing Java 5 EE application.
Usage
Servlet
To use the web2printer servlet just insert a hyperlink to the web2printer servlet on your printable web page.
Example 1: http://www.printer-friendly.com/web2printer/print?page=/2008011945/java/web2printer.html&lnk=1&img=3
Servlet Filter
For the web2printer servlet filter just append "web2printer" to your get or post parameters.
Parameters
Web2printer accepts get and post parameters. The parameters validated before they are processed.
| parameter |
value |
meaning |
constraint |
| lnk |
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length == 1, numeric, between 0 and 2
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1 |
create hyperlink xref |
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2 |
create hyperlink xref and remove get parameters
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| img |
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length ==1, numeric, between 0 and 4
|
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1 |
supress images
|
|
| |
2 |
replace images with IMAGE
|
|
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3 |
replace images with alt="" tag
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|
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4 |
replace images with alt="" tag and create a image xref
|
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| page |
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only needed supported by web2printer servlet
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valid path, max 255 chars, host part is web2printer site url
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valid path
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Build
Web2printer is built using the Maven software project management tool.
Follow these instructions to build web2printer from source on your machine.
Prerequisites
To build web2printer, you'll need the software listed below installed on your machine.
Running a web2printer build
mvn package
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You may need to run the 'mvn' command multiple times when
you're first starting out, as it downloads plugins and the download
process does not seem to be entirely reliable.
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Use the setting -Dmaven.test.skip=true if you don't want tests to run.
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Use the setting -Dmaven.test.failure.ignore=true if you don't want the build to stop if a test fails
The output will be put in the "target" folder of every subproject.
Building the documentation
To build the documentation site, execute:
mvn site
The documentation will be put in the target/site folder.
Configuration
The web2printer configuration will be done via the init-parameters inside the web.xml file.
<!-- web2printer default language -->
<init-param>
<param-name>defaultLocale</param-name>
<param-value>en_US</param-value>
</init-param>
<!-- resolve user locale on every request -->
<init-param>
<param-name>localePerRequest</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
</init-param>
<!-- definition of clipping area -->
<init-param>
<param-name>startToken</param-name>
<param-value><![CDATA[<!-- start main content -->]]></param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
<param-name>endToken</param-name>
<param-value><![CDATA[<!-- end main content -->]]></param-value>
</init-param>
<!-- The following parameters on relevant for web2printer servlet -->
<!-- site url, other hostnames not accepted -->
<init-param>
<param-name>site-url</param-name>
<param-value>http://localhost:8080/web2printer</param-value>
</init-param>
<!-- timeout in milliseconds for retieve content -->
<init-param>
<param-name>timeout</param-name>
<param-value>3000</param-value>
</init-param>
Localisation
To localise web2printer, just create a messages.properties for your language an locale. Your translations are welcome.
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