Can we improve the data density when printing?

I often print out certain Pespectives, but due to OF2’s problem with data density - and due to our inability to change the default styles - my printout is now twice as long as it used to be for the same amount of text.

I’m really hoping these problems get dealt with, as it’s pretty awful right now.

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I moved a post to an existing topic: How can the data density be improved?

In Pro, print output can be fully customized by providing an HTML template with updated styles. This template lives in an HTMLExportTemplate.html file, which should be placed right next to the OmniFocus.ofocus database in ~/Library/Containers/com.omnigroup.OmniFocus2/Data/Library/Application Support/OmniFocus.

You can use the default template as a starting point; it can be found in OmniFocus.app/Contents/Resources/HTMLExportTemplate.html.

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Hi Ken,

So I went into the contents of the OF2 app, found OmniFocus.app/Contents/Resources/HTMLExportTemplate.html, but it’s empty. No content. How do I provide it with updated styles? Say, for instance a different sized font?

Agreed. I can’t determine how to do this, either. @kcase, can you please elaborate on your instructions?

Thanks!
Rique

Hey @rogbar. I’m seeing full HTML file with CSS options inside. Has something changed within the past day, maybe? (Could you check now?)

Here’s the file if it’s still coming up blank, though. (Make sure you open it in a text editor.)

Thanks Derek. I downloaded the file from your post, owned it in TextEdit, and it’s still blank. (As is the OmniFocus.app/Contents/Resources/HTMLExportTemplate.html on my hard drive.)

Is there something else I should be using to open it?

Ah, that explains it! TextEdit is interpreting the HTML rather than showing you the underlying code. You can change this behavior in TextEdit’s Preferences:

(Or you could temporarily rename the file to have a .txt extension rather than .html. Or you could use an editor designed for editing HTML code, which might make editing easier anyway.)

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That worked. Thank you.

It probably comes as no surprise to you that now that I’ve opened it, I have no idea what to do with it. My goal was to improve how it looks when printing.

For example, in printing a Contexts perspective, I’d like to change the font (including size and color) for the names of the Contexts, to visually differentiate it more from the actions indented beneath them.

(FWIW, printing in OF1 was a lot nicer. I could get twice as many actions on a printed page of OF1 as I can with OF2. I susect this has a lot to do with data density, and the 2-lines per action in OF2 versus 1 line per action in OF1. Is there anything we can do about that?

I just have to concur. I just printed for the first time from OF2 and am totally surprise by the output. Doesn’t look very professional at all. Anyhow, hopefully these templates will take care of things but for now I don’t think the print output is anywhere near where it needs to be.

This is really promising. Will pro have an ability to have multiple templates which can be selected in the print dialog?

BTW, here’s how to figure out what to do with it. This is also the template used on HTML export, so export a view as HTML, and you have a full HTML file to start playing with.

When printing, it will use the CSS rules in the header of the document and the ones in the @media print section. You will be able to tweak the CSS rules as you like.

If you don’t know CSS, well, you’re a bit out of luck. There are probably decent free HTML/CSS editors out there, but I don’t have any recommendations.

Hi Alan,

Thanks for the explanation. Alas, I don’t know anything about CSS, so I’ll do some research, but perhaps you can advise me on one issue.

When I export to HTML - which in my opinion looks quite a bit better than printing straight from OF2 - the print comes out gray, not black. Is there some easy way in CSS I can change the HTML printout from gray to black?

Thanks in advance …

There’s a section for the body tag which sets the color. You want to change the #666666 to #000000.

body {
	font-size: 10pt;
	font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;
	color: #000000;
} 
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That did the trick, Alan. Thank you VERY much.

The customization hooks are still in place, obviously, but we’ve now updated the default print layout to be more compact as well. Thanks for your feedback about this!

Does anybody know what the name of the OmniFocus 2 font family is? I assumed it was Proxima Nova but I can’t find it in my Mac’s font collection. I would like to use it for printing, too, but don’t know which font-family to define in the css.

OmniFocus uses a slightly modified version of Proxima Nova (nicknamed “Approxima Nova”).

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but I can’t seem to get this to work. I’ve tried modifying the OmniFocus.app/Contents/Resources/HTMLExportTemplate.htm file by changing the #666666 to #000000, but it looks the same. I know I’m being wasteful printing in the first place but what should print on 2 to 3 pages takes 10. Thanks for any help

I prefer to export to HTML before printing, since the margins are narrower and I can get more on a page. However, I cannot figure out how to show checkmark circles or any kind of image for a task. This makes using the printouts as agendas difficult when I have a lot of tasks in a project.

Is there any way to get the checkmark circles to export and print?