Option to Print Comments, Too?

Hi @doesper, ya I’ll set that higher on my list of priorities. It’s helpful. I’ll update this thread when I add it, but no guarantee as to when it will get done. I’m pretty sure blogbook.com or blog2print.com can do that.

Hey Dave, an update: I investigated how this could be done. It’ll be a bit of work to add (more work than, for example, adding categories, because I’ll need to make separate HTTP requests to get all the comments). But it’s quite doable. I’ll ping you here when I get around to making this happen.

That is wonderful news, Michael! Your “Print My Blog” plugin is tremendous, and I really appreciate the effort you are putting in to improving it. Is there a place I can contribute? This is so useful to me that I feel compelled to help financially support your fine efforts!

Thanks much,

Dave

Wow thanks that would be helpful. I could prioritize it alongside regular work.
You can make a donation at https://PayPal.me/cmljnelson

Also, out of of curiosity, how are you using the plugin? I’ve assumed most folks would just print their blog once, and be kinda done with it. It sounds like you’re getting more use out of it than most folks.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Michael Nelson.

Hi Michael,

Actually, I’ll be printing my entire blog once a year, to reflect new content, of course, and the revisions I make to past entries.

I can’t contribute a lot, but at least I figure I should donate $25 USD to you for your efforts. Wish it could be more. I went to your Paypal site, but don’t see the usual option to pay with a credit card. Don’t really want to sign up for a PayPal account, but perhaps I could mail you a check?

Keep up the good work!

Thanks much,

Dave

David Oesper
Dodgeville, Wisconsin USA

oh no worries. Ya I just have a personal account setup, so you can’t use credit card. I will let you know if that gets worked out. For now, helping to improve it and tell others about it is the biggest help anyway.
I implemented comments. Please give it a whirl by downloading it from https://github.com/mnelson4/printmyblog/archive/FET/comments.zip

Oh and because it takes a little while longer to load all the comments, I thought it would be best to have the option DISABLED by default (I could be convinced that it’s best to enabled it by default too). So when you try it, you’ll need to open up the advances optiond and turn it on.

Hi Dave, just to let you know, I’m thinking of merging this into the main plugin soon. I think it’s quite likely to be a popular feature. But if you get a chance to test it before then and provide feedback that would be great. Again, the link to download this version is https://github.com/mnelson4/printmyblog/archive/FET/comments.zip

Well, support for printing comments has been put in 1.4.0. Let me know if you have any feedback about that. Hope you’re doing well Dave!

Hi Michael,

Just printed a PDF of my blog with comments – looks great! Having them disabled by default is fine. (Of course, I will always have that option on!) I can see you have made a number of improvements since last I looked – wow!

My only comment at this point is that I couldn’t tell from the plugin when the PDF file was finished getting created. No biggie, and I think you mentioned earlier that this would be difficult or impossible to do, so if that is the case, that’s OK!

Many thanks,

Dave

Hi

Thank you both for this feature!

Just wanted to point out a few things:

1. A translation issue:
   The expressions “Comments” and “No Comments” are in English, when my site isn’t in English
2. Is it helpful that it says “No Comments”? I’m not sure…
3. The date format isn’t the one used in my site, and I wish it could also incude the time ??
4. The HTML is build a little different, resulting in a slightly different style than the one in my blog: from what I can tell, in the printed version the <article> tag with the comment-body class encapsulates also its children, while on the blog it doesn’t. Not a big deal, just thought I’d bring it up. I don’t know if it’s worth wasting time on.

Other that that, though, it’s a great feature.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 12 months ago by Lea.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 12 months ago by Lea.

Thanks for the feedback @leac.

> A translation issue:
The expressions “Comments” and “No Comments” are in English, when my site isn’t in English

That’s because the strings are coming from the plugin’s domain. In order for them to appear in your language, the plugin needs to be translated into your language too.

> Is it helpful that it says “No Comments”? I’m not sure…

I’m open to changing it to just being blank instead. I just thought leaving it blank might be confusing, as folks might think “hey, it says ‘comments’ but I don’t see them. Where are they?” etc

> The date format isn’t the one used in my site, and I wish it could also incude the time ??

Oh right, yes it’s using a default time format, not the WordPress site’s time format. I’ll need to figure out how to convert a Javascript date into the WordPress time format. I’ve created a GitHub issue to track that: https://github.com/mnelson4/printmyblog/issues/19.

> in the printed version the <article> tag with the comment-body class encapsulates also its children, while on the blog it doesn’t.

I looked into it a little and couldn’t find the difference. But I bet there is because, in the print version, the HTML is being generated in Javascript, and not by the theme directly. It was was a “good enough” fix to begin with, but I think it will require a lot more time to make it flexible to look nearly identical to what’s in the web version of sites (of course we probably don’t want it to exactly match the web version though, because that has text inputs, and “reply” buttons etc, which we wouldn’t want.) I think I’ll wait to hear more from users before creating a specific ticket regarding this, but thanks for bringing it up.

I don’t think I’ll embark on improving the comments just yet, but this was helpful feedback for future work.

FYI @doesper, I’ve finally updated the Open Collective page to mention how you can also donate via mail.
All the best!

Putting a check in the mail to you today, Michael, thank you!

Dave

Thanks so much! Even a small amount is very encouraging!