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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 August 29

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August 29

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Oldest Intel motherboard chipset manufactured

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What is the oldest Intel chipset still being manufactured? Are companies still making Sandy or Ivy Bridge motherboards? Thanks 212.15.177.17 (talk) 00:16, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly cheating, but VIA is still selling the VIA C7 (a clone based on Intel's P6 architecture). Actual Intel stuff though seems to be discontinued pretty rapidly after the next revision comes out. Maybe something in the Atom range? Embedded and mobile CPUs stick around longer. 108.29.92.150 (talk) 02:09, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PDF Snapshot of View of Web Page (Windows 10)

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If I an using Windows 10 and am viewing a web site with a web browser, can I create a PDF of the view of the web page?

That is an incomplete question as stated, as a lead-in to the real question, because the reply to the incomplete question is: What web browser are you using? That's not a Windows 10 function; that's a web browser function.

So the real question is: If I am using Windows 10 and am viewing a web site with the XYZ web browser, can I create a PDF of the view of the web page? Opera: Yes. There is a middle-finger function, Save as PDF. Firefox: Google Chrome: Windows Edge:

So the real question is whether I can save a PDF of the web page from viewing the web page using Firefox, Chrome, or Windows Edge. I know that there is a function to Save, but that saves the HTML that was generating the display to the screen. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Robert McClenon, generally the way you will do this is print-to-PDF. My Chromium browser under Linux and Windows has a built-in PDF output in the print function. Your mileage may vary. It may require an extension or plug-in. But this is a relatively universal solution. I know that Windows has a "Save to PDF" print object built-in. Elizium23 (talk) 21:16, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
User:Elizium23 - Okay. So that is one step beyond the web browser, diverting the output that would otherwise be spooled. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:29, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
User:Elizium23 - Thank you. That worked. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you care about the technical stuff, this is needed because PDF is just PostScript encapsulated in a file. So you need something that generates PostScript, namely the printing service. Print-to-file just saves the Postscript to the PDF file instead of sending it off to a printer. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 22:19, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That is useful background information. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:41, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That's not entirely true. PostScript is a document formatting language and when I save PostScript code in a file I get a PostScript file (usual extension: .ps). It's my preferred way of making vector graphics. But hardware to interpret PostScript code was very expensive in the 1980s, so they needed something simpler when cheap consumer printers appeared. PDF started as a subset of PostScript (eleminating things like loops and recursion) so that it could be used on cheap printers. Later Adobe added extensions. But you're right that a printer driver that normally generates PDF code to drive the printer can just as well send that code to a file, making a PDF file. Or if it normally sends PostScript to the printer, it can send it to a ps file instead. The printer is a file too, so it's just a change of output filename. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:15, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting, thanks for the added details. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:10, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]