282581 - Printing out even extremely long URLs without truncation

Status: NEW

(Core :: Printing: Output, enhancement)

Description

[Mozilla.20.TEN]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

One feature Mozilla has "inherited" from the earliest history of "GUI" browsers
is  cutting down URLs with an ellipsis (...) when printing them e.g. in the page
header ("lynx -dump" still "knew" how to print them in full).
With URLs growing "ever longer" on some popular sites, and the need to keep full
URLs on archived (paper or e.g. PS/PDF) copies in times of rampant "link rot", I
wonder if I have overlooked some "print full URLs" or, more generally "do not
truncate text in header/footer" option.
Otherwise, while I would be grateful for an indication where to make an
appropriate patch from those more familiar with the sources, let me take this
opportunity to file this as a feature request to enhance the Page Setup dialog
or the "more obscure" about:config in this way.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Print page with long <title> and/or URL (e.g. in the above example).

Actual Results:  
"Simulation:"
Wordily Verbosity Corp.: Why Do Our Overly Long Captions always get truncat...
http://so.do.longdomains.int/highlyobfuscated/path?with=too&parameters=many...

Expected Results:  
An option to print out the full URL (or e.g. the title as well for that matter)
where the policy is to require "bookkeeping" of unabridged URLs, even if this
causes the respective header/footer column (and thereby the section it is part
of) to grow to several lines.

Of course, one could use a text mode browser such as lynx or w3m instead, or
e.g. "wget" the whole page source and subsequently "echo >>" the URL into an
appended "<!-- http://long.url -->", or simply cache the entire page(s)
somewhere - but none of this is a solution accessible to the average user as
easily as hitting Ctrl+P.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 3

[Mozilla.20.TEN]

Unless I have missed some "obscure" option, there still seems to be no way to
force Mozilla/Firefox to print out full URLs (and possibly titles as well).
While the truncated version will do for most people, paper hardcopies which do
not reveal the exact location ("somewhere on that site...") make poor
documentary evidence in many instances where precision is required by policy,
scientific convention, or even for legal reasons.

Comment 4

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs,
filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

Firefox still will not print full URLs!  This is hardly an enhancement; the URL footer printing is quite useless as it currently stands.  Printing only the beginning of a URL makes no sense in these times of immensely long URLs.

Comment 6

[Stephanie Daugherty [:sdaugherty]]

Confirming as feature request, I think this RFE should be in the printing subsystem not the preferences.

Comment 7

[Markus Brandt]

Confirming, too, this request.
Still not fixed.

A solution could be an additional checkbox in the page setup dialog with something like "print full URI in header/footer"

Comment 8

[Scott R]

Confirming this is a fantastic Firefox annoyance. If URL is assigned to "left" field the maximum length seems to be to centre of page which is where "Centre" field is assigned "-- blank --" in margin setting dialog. Is "-- blank --" part of the problem stopping URL using rest of line or is it ignored? 

Consider output to a PDF printer the URL would be function correctly in PDF viewer if it were not truncated. An option to automatically create a URL short form (eg bit.ly) and insert into header/footer would be a very useful, especially for case where url exceeds full header or footer line length.

Could an extension change the current behaviour?

Comment 9

[[e-mail]]

I am an academic research scientist, and consider Firefox to be almost useless if there is no way I can choose to have full URLs and full titles printed in headers and footers for any given webpage, no matter how many lines this may require.  - [e-mail]

Comment 10

[George Chriss]

Not a proper fix but printing in landscape helps.

Comment 11

[Sebou]

Confirming, too, this request.
Still not fixed.