annotate: printing the buffer/region with annotations

annotate: printing the buffer/region with annotations

[Christopher Howard]

Hi, I started using annotate package and the annotations and code look great on the screen. I was trying to figure out if there was some way to print out the code+annotations to my printer (or to a printable document) without having to take a bunch of screenshots.

Someone on IRC suggested ps-print-buffer-with-faces. This does print out in color, but it only prints the code, not the annotations.

-- 
📛 Christopher Howard
🚀 gemini://gem.librehacker.com
🌐 http://gem.librehacker.com

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

Re: annotate: printing the buffer/region with annotations

[Michael Heerdegen]

Christopher Howard <christopher@librehacker.com> writes:

> Hi, I started using annotate package and the annotations and code look
> great on the screen. I was trying to figure out if there was some way
> to print out the code+annotations to my printer (or to a printable
> document) without having to take a bunch of screenshots.
>
> Someone on IRC suggested ps-print-buffer-with-faces. This does print
> out in color, but it only prints the code, not the annotations.

It might be that there is no nice direct way using ps-printing.  I see
two possibilities:

- Export the view in text form, in some way.  Seems annotate.el
provides `annotate-integrate-annotations' - this uses the same
buffer/file though, AFAIU, so it might be a bit inconvenient.

- Use a different printing tool.  I'd try htmlize.el: just M-x
htmlize-buffer RET.  If you are lucky (didn't try) the result will
contain the annotations.  Print the html using your browser.  htmlize.el
gives good looking results most of the time.

If none of that works it would probably not be hard to create something
convenient by yourself.


Michael.

Re: annotate: printing the buffer/region with annotations

[Christopher Howard]

> - Export the view in text form, in some way.  Seems annotate.el
> provides `annotate-integrate-annotations' - this uses the same
> buffer/file though, AFAIU, so it might be a bit inconvenient.
>
> - Use a different printing tool.  I'd try htmlize.el: just M-x
> htmlize-buffer RET.  If you are lucky (didn't try) the result will
> contain the annotations.  Print the html using your browser.  htmlize.el
> gives good looking results most of the time.
>
> If none of that works it would probably not be hard to create something
> convenient by yourself.
>
>
> Michael.

I tried out HTMLize. It gets me close to what I want. Unforunately, htmlize seems to be unable to properly class the annotation text, so that it is not tied by color or by css class to the corresponding underlined regions - i.e., the annotations just end up looking like part of the original source text.

I suppose I could set Annotation Position Policy to :new-line, and then use some kind of convention, where I prefix the annotation text with something like "ANNOTATION: (VARIABLE-NAME)" and then I could htmlize and get something that is readable.

I don't think annotate-integrate-annotations is useful here as the annotation gets inserted into the buffer as a language specific comment (e.g., a fortran comment when in fortran mode) and I know I don't want the annotations getting slipped into the actual code comments.

-- 
Christopher Howard