Chrome and Printing to PDF

[wraith808]

Just posting this in case anyone else runs afoul of it.  And hoping that someone else might have a workaround.

Chrome introduced a print to PDF setting on the browser. However, long before they did so, many people used another software way of doing it.  I've been using PDFFactory for YEARS before they introduced that.  They've crippled every other way of doing it, in the name of compatibility, even though they worked fine before.

A thread on it: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92304

Basically, if you print to PDF from chrome, it creates a fully searchable PDF.  However, if you print to a printer driver from chrome, it creates a rasterized flattened image to send to the printer.  The quality sucks, and you can't search it.  It took me forever to figure out what was going on.

[dr_andus]

Thanks for the heads-up. It's good to know. The way PDF printing works in various applications and with different print drivers can be quite mystifying sometimes.

Not sure if it's a convenient work-around but I wonder if you could have a hotkey (AutoHotkey?) to launch the page in Firefox instead and print from there?

[Deozaan]

That Issue is from 4 years ago. (Chrome version 13! 13! Wow. Remember when version numbers meant something? ) Printing to PDF has been a feature in Chrome for years. Why even bother using a 3rd party plugin to print to PDFs anymore?

Just posting this in case anyone else runs afoul of it.  And hoping that someone else might have a workaround.

The Issue also tells you the workaround: Use Chrome's Print to PDF feature instead of the 3rd party plugin.

[wraith808]

That Issue is from 4 years ago. (Chrome version 13! 13! Wow. Remember when version numbers meant something? ) Printing to PDF has been a feature in Chrome for years. Why even bother using a 3rd party plugin to print to PDFs anymore?

Just posting this in case anyone else runs afoul of it.  And hoping that someone else might have a workaround.

The Issue also tells you the workaround: Use Chrome's Print to PDF feature instead of the 3rd party plugin.

That's not a workaround, and I said that in the original post.  It's a cop out.  PDF Factory has other features that print to PDF doesn't have.

• Combine multiple documents into one PDF: Even from multiple sources.
• Rearrange pages using thumbnail view
• Instant preview: Without having to save and open in Acrobat.
• Security: Encrypt and control access to PDF files:
• Font embedding: All original fonts are displayed, even if the reader does not have them.
• Page insertion and deletion: Delete unwanted content before the PDF is created.
• Send via email: eMail PDFs with one click. Copy PDF to clipboard for pasting into an existing email.
• Drag & Drop: Easy integration with Evernote, Gmail and other cloud based facilities.
• Create PDFs on letterhead.
• Add page numbering, headers, footers, watermarks.
• Bookmark each job automatically.
• Create table of contents automatically.
• Convert to grayscale.
• PDF/A archiving.
• Add text notes.
• Fill in forms.
• Crop pages.
• Edit text.
• Add multiple signatures and initials with Notes function
• Combine documents into a single PDF and rearrange them.
• Custom Drivers for specific tasks.
• Text highlight, copy and redact.
• Graphic copy, delete, save.
• Convert text to links.

Just because the Print to PDF is good enough for your uses, doesn't mean it's good enough for everyone's.  Nor that it's right.  And if it's from version 13, it seems as if they would have done something not to cripple every other use of it.  This isn't a plugin to Chrome, it's a standard printer driver.  And they're sending rastarized flattened version for our own good.  They said there was a fix in 17, but here we are, years later, and it still hasn't been fixed.

Right.

[Deozaan]

I guess I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that printing to PDF in Chrome creates a large raster file and you were asking for a workaround.

The Issue seems to still be open. Perhaps you could ask around in a comment on the Issue if any progress is expected to ever be made.