There’s a new PDF format in town: WWF, which disallows printing natively:
The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out.
It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.
Hah! I can’t help but thinking about the wrestling organization but that’s just me.
Is this something you’ll be using?
Adam Shields says
I cannot think of a good reason to use this. Sometime things need to be printed. Yes some people print more than they really need. But why would I use a format that restricts use of the content except as an exercise in DRM?
Ben Miller says
I can’t see myself ever using this. If I want to save paper, I can just decide not to print. Then if I change my mind later, I can print. No need to go through the effort to add unnecessary restrictions to a file.
If I’m publishing something for someone else to read, how can I decide if any of my users will ever need to print something for offline reading?
Rev Paul Benedict says
Great thought, but I don’t like the idea of never being able to print something out once I’ve committed to this format. Especially if I was distributing the file to others. How can I tell if they will never need to print it?
Text should be free and this is like locking text in an unnecessary prison.
Rev Paul