Simple Print

Productivity

article to pdf converter

SHOW HN2018

122points
39comments
#355of 2,155 in 2018
Top 17%of 2018 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

4 positive, 8 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 7 critical, out of 19 comments about the project. Thread score -0.19.

Execution: 1 for, 4 againstIdea: 1 for, 2 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 againstPricing: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Useful tool, reliable uptime

    From 2 comments
    • I'd like to add that I use tools from fivefilters.org daily. (Mostly Push to Kindle) If the authors are on this thread, thank you so much for making these tools free to use and…
      tylerdiaz on HN
    • cool stuff! I tried it in my blog and the result was excellent.
      roadbeats on HN

Objections

  • Multi-column output and images not yet supported

    From 2 comments
    • Does this support images? I tried to convert Ernest P. Chan's blog [0] into a pdf using this and the results were not well formatted. [0] - http://epchan.blogspot.com/
      gravypod on HN
    • This would be insanely more useful if it could display math correctly. For example, most of the math in https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-Topology only shows the…
      jclos on HN
  • Unclear need given built-in print to PDF

    From 1 comment
    • I dont really get the use-case for this. macOS has had print to pdf for any app since its inception, iOS has had it for at least the last couple of versions, surely Windows and…
      stephenr on HN
  • Possible copyright issues with copying article content

    From 1 comment
    • Step two seems to be almost certainly copyright infringement in the UK, not sure about USA exactly but as you take money and then copy the content it seems likely to breech the…
      pbhjpbhj on HN

Requests

  • Public API for URL to PDF

    From 1 comment
    • Hope it has open API, for something like when request URL it will immediatly return PDF for download ``` http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/#http://example.com ``` Now I use…
      app4soft on HN
  • Include original article URL

    From 1 comment
    • The original URL should be included somewhere. That said, I don't quite understand the advantage of this solution versus a plain article view (e.g. firefox's built-in article…
      stewbrew on HN
  • EPUB output

    From 1 comment
    • Could there be a way to print to EPub? PDF is uniquely bad for mobile readability but EPub solves for that
      sfifs on HN

Questions

  • How the content extraction works

    From 1 comment
    • Looks very cool! Could you explain the tech that you developed ? Did you create a new algorithm for extracting the content from the page or used an existing one ?
      roadbeats on HN
  • Advantage over reader view and built-in print

    From 1 comment
    • The original URL should be included somewhere. That said, I don't quite understand the advantage of this solution versus a plain article view (e.g. firefox's built-in article…
      stewbrew on HN

Alternatives named

  • PrintFriendly

    From 2 comments
    • Hope it has open API, for something like when request URL it will immediatly return PDF for download ``` http://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/#http://example.com ``` Now I use…
      app4soft on HN
    • PrintFriendly has an api - https://www.printfriendly.com/api Which webpage does PrintFriendly doesn't support?
      boundlessdreamz on HN
  • Firefox reader view and Safari Reader Mode

    From 2 comments
    • The original URL should be included somewhere. That said, I don't quite understand the advantage of this solution versus a plain article view (e.g. firefox's built-in article…
      stewbrew on HN
    • For those using Safari, I've often had good results by turning on Reader Mode and then printing, which strips out a lot of the extraneous junk that articles online tend to have.
      saagarjha on HN
  • Send to Kindle

    From 1 comment
    • Very interesting, reminds me of the chrome extension, send to my Kindle, which sends a pdf version of the web page to my Kindle.
      bob_theslob646 on HN
  • Mozilla Pocket

    From 1 comment
    • I use Mozilla Pocket to do essentially just that. I add articles to Pocket with Firefox Desktop and then read them on my Kobo e-reader. I find it much more pleasant to read long…
      jgneff on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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