This weekend I searched unsuccessfully for a Movable Type plug-in that would create a PDF version of Contact Sheet. We know full well that The Web Is Not Print, and even more that Print Is Not the Web (thanks to Dave S. for the reminder). With that in mind, I hacked together my own PHP script bringing you the short history of Contact Sheet in PDF.

The links are gone, the graphics are gone, every bit of formatting is gone making it one bland robotic document. I’m not in the business of creating an HTML to PDF converter, so I threw the CSS out with the bathwater. This is pure text and line breaks, baby.

So does this have any useful purpose? It’s good for saving a simple copy of your weblog, or packaging your blog into one portable file. It’s great for printing out your blog in one fell swoop to save for the year when harddrives are obsolete. I’ve come across great sites wishing there was one PDF that I could grab, saving me the pain of motion-sickness reading that much text on screen.

(Interestingly, two proponents of web standards that I’ve read recently each relate their standardization concerns to current technology becoming obsolete.

In the above Owen Brigg’s design rant:

Just like much of NASA’s 1976 Viking data. NASA can no longer read the format those tapes are in. Researchers are having to review that Mars data by digging through paper print-outs that older scientist hadn’t thrown away.

Jeffrey Zeldman says:

My studio was built around an Akai 12-track, an excellent machine, but with a proprietary format… A year into it, Akai changed their tape format. My master tapes became museum pieces. Then the machine broke down and I couldn’t easily arrange repairs or get parts. This experience would later make me highly receptive to the advantages of common technological standards, as in Web standards.

…but what we really need are less standards and more paper printouts!)

Formatting aside, the main stink is that links don’t work (at least in the printed version, of course), severely limiting the context of many blogs.

I used the R&OS PDF classes, but there are a lot more free PHP-PDF tools available, some with XML capabilities that might be a better way to retain more of the styles and formatting. For this example, I created a new MT template, stripped out all the HTML, and fed it to the PHP script which was an altered version of the sample that came with the package.

If others are interested I’ll make it available, once I peel away the duct tape and rubber bands holding it together. But I said it before and I’ll say it again: it ain’t pretty.