Paper instead of a format

The question

The 6-in-1 asked whether a print or export menu was worth building for four things: the list of “n records in this period”, a single event card, an event page, and the saved records.

The first finding was that the site had never been able to print at all. It had not one @media print rule. Ctrl+P on a record page put the header, the language switch and the footer on paper; on the axis it printed the axis itself, marks sized for a screen’s width. The dark theme printed pale text on white paper, which is to say almost nothing.

The second was that three of the four are one thing. A period, a search’s results and the saved records are shown by the axis as the same list of cards, so printing the list covers all three. A card is a shortened record page without its sources; printing it separately would give worse paper than the page it already leads to. The 6-in-1 chose the page, the list and the saved records. The card stays as it is, and so do file formats such as CSV or JSON: handing the collection out as a file is a decision about whether to give it away whole, not a question of interface.

The record page

What prints is the record. The header, the language switch and the buttons go. The text is black on white whatever the screen’s theme. Every outside link, which is to say every source, is followed by its address, since paper cannot be clicked; links inside the atlas stay names. At the top stand the record’s full address and the day it was printed. The verification line (“Sources collected automatically”), the notes about a publication date or a text’s language, and the footer’s partial-coverage line print as the screen shows them. A printout without them would claim more than the page does.

The “Print or PDF” button in the header calls the browser’s ordinary print, which is where “Save as PDF” lives. It is there because an installed atlas opens with no browser menu and nowhere else to print from. Without script the button is hidden: the page does not offer what would not work.

The list and the saved records

Over the axis’s list there is now a row with the number of records and the same button. On screen the cards are cut to one height and their summaries to four lines; on paper the list runs its full length, every card whole, its summary complete, the record’s address under it. At the top: the list’s name (the period, the search, or “Saved”), how many records it holds, the list’s own address and the day. The saved list is the exception. It lives in the reader’s browser alone, so its address would open someone else’s list or none, and its heading names only the day. The axis’s cards carry no sources, so the heading says where they are: on each record’s page, at the address under its card.

The line about the alpha and partial coverage prints at the foot; the key hints and the links do not. The axis does not go on paper at all. In its place prints a sentence saying its marks are sized for a screen, and that to print a period’s records one opens them with “As a list”.

How much paper

The 1990s list is 75 records and 19 A4 pages. All of 2026 is 117 records; the 2020s are 381, which is a book. The count now stands over the list before anything is printed, so the reader knows what the button will do.

The addresses under the cards and the heading are drawn only while printing, between the browser’s beforeprint and afterprint, and synchronously, so that they reach the paper. On screen nothing extra lies under each of several hundred cards.

Checks

Two new browser tests. The first prints a record page in the dark theme: the heading must be black, the header hidden, the source’s address after its link, and the print day there exactly once however many times it is printed. Without script there is no button. The second prints the newest decade’s list and a saved list of two records from the axis. The number in the heading must equal the number of cards, the addresses must be as many, and they must be gone once printing ends. The saved list’s heading must name no address, and the axis must print its note in its own place. Every expectation is read from the data; no test names a record.