ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
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User ID: 1098
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
22d ago
Now and then I need to print sensitive documents like account recovery codes, and I don't trust internet-connected devices like basically all modern printers. I decided to see what kind of printers were out there that didn't need internet connectivity. There are a few that one can supposedly use over USB, but the printer I settled on was actually a USB receipt printer intended for point-of-sale use. The output is plenty big enough for notes, shopping lists, and recovery codes, and it's easy to operate, so I bought one.
It's been a lot of fun playing with this printer. It's really fast, and there's no ink to deal with. The best part is the document length is unlimited; it's just continuous paper on a roll with no page breaks. So longer-form documents come out as a looooong narrow page.
What has been interesting has been seeing the software bugs this exposes in common software. One would think that page size is completely arbitrary and it should be possible to print in any dimensions, but no.
- Chromium can't print pages longer than about a meter. It also (unrelated to the printer; I just discovered this during this exploration since I don't ever use Chromium at home) cannot print from reader mode.
- Firefox tries to be extremely clever in how it parses the paper size, and ends up barfing when it encounters the description of the receipt paper size. It falls back to treating the document size as A4 with the narrow column of text centered, which means the only visible portion of the document when printed is the blank left side of the A4 page.
- Many programs (Obsidian looking at you) can't print natively, falling back to a PDF renderer from which one is supposed to print. The trouble is that Obsidian's PDF renderer only allows common paper sizes like US Letter and A4. There's a community plugin for printing, but with this printer it only succeeds on every other attempt.
- Many websites can't render properly in a narrow window or document. Combined with Chromium not printing from reader mode and Firefox failing completely, I haven't figured out how to print blog posts and essays formatted nicely.
I'm not sure what I expected given that I was doing something unusual, but I also expect software to be getting better over time so I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Still, it works for what I really need it for, and maybe I can figure out how to work around these bugs.
Yes; I bought paper that's supposed to have at least a 5-year lifespan before fading, and I'm keeping a skeptical eye on how the printouts actually fade. I'll probably get a USB laser printer eventually but the shopping is such a chore.
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