The WWE extension is similar but adds a "suplex" option.

December 2, 2010 10:08 AM

Interested in doing a small favour to the environment? In raising awareness about planetary issues? In supporting an international environmental organization? Next time you’re going to share a document, save it as a WWF.

The WWF format is like a PDF, but removes all "print" options from the document. Via.

posted by Shepherd (45 comments total)

And how does it help the environment moreso than a .doc or a .pdf?

(It's probably good to note that their software is Mac only, too.)
posted by crunchland at 10:14 AM on December 2, 2010

I think this is just going to be a pain. How much unnecessary printing is there, really? What if I don't have access to a computer on a regular basis and need the document in a solid copy? Give me a break...
posted by sunshinesky at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2010

What a wonderful, wonderful title.
posted by cavalier at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2010 [6 favorites]

A truly environmentally friendly WWF document would play an audio recording of Hulk Hogan whenever one attempted to print: "Do you really want to do that, brother??"
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:16 AM on December 2, 2010 [11 favorites]

Please think of the environment before printing this email.
posted by fixedgear at 10:16 AM on December 2, 2010

considered and rejected: WWWWFD?
posted by facetious at 10:17 AM on December 2, 2010

How much unnecessary printing is there, really?

Do you work in an office? Either mine is an anomaly or a whole fucking lot.
posted by griphus at 10:18 AM on December 2, 2010 [21 favorites]

Trying to figure out how this works I did a little googling. Not much information, but I did find this in a comment: "PDF's have long had the ability to prevent printing so this is nothing new."

Huh?

pdf2ps file.[pdf|wwf] | lpr
posted by DU at 10:18 AM on December 2, 2010 [5 favorites]

This seems like an incredibly silly idea that won't actually help their stated goal. People who are already conscientious about not wasting paper by printing things unnecessarily don't need a new document format, they'll simply...choose not to print. People who aren't concerned about this issue are unlikely to be convinced by being presented with something new and unfamiliar that's more likely to create a "Hey, why can't I print this" aggravation. Which they will proceed to get around anyway by saving it as a PDF or doing printscreen or some other workaround.
posted by Gator at 10:18 AM on December 2, 2010 [7 favorites]

It's basically a pdf with a new extension. So I guess their thought is, a small, meaningless gesture is better than no gesture at all.
posted by crunchland at 10:22 AM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh god no. I want simple, standardized universal formats. I don't want to convert documents any more, or open gigantic clumsy files when plain text would have done fine.

And some of us print things to save hard copies, or to save strain on our eyes.

Also: This currently only works on Mac, soon to work on Windows. Us Linux users are not mentioned.
Also: When I try to "learn more," I see:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_SL in /home/kunden/webs/wwf/saveaswwf.com/typo3conf/localconf.php on line 5
posted by Stagger Lee at 10:22 AM on December 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

How much unnecessary printing is there, really?

My cubicle is between two islands with 5 large printers each, those babies are cranking all day.

Now if only we could stop people from printing web pages, email, pictures of cats in pajamas ... well ok, pics of cats in pajamas are ok to print
posted by Ad hominem at 10:23 AM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm going to start sending all my quasi-christian, "somebody think of the children", hyperbolic, misinformed, snopes-bait email forwards in .WWJD format.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:24 AM on December 2, 2010 [3 favorites]

This seems like an incredibly silly idea that won't actually help their stated goal.

Just like most "green consumer" gimmicks.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:25 AM on December 2, 2010

Just like most "green consumer" gimmicks.

What, you mean these stacks upon stacks of "paperless office" documentation isn't green?
posted by griphus at 10:27 AM on December 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

::takes screenshot of WWF document, prints it just to be a jerk::
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:28 AM on December 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

What would be even better is if someone were to invent, oh, say...Instapaper.
posted by etc. at 10:32 AM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think this is just going to be a pain. How much unnecessary printing is there, really? What if I don't have access to a computer on a regular basis and need the document in a solid copy? Give me a break...

I print every Mefi thread each night. But I always check recent activity first to make sure there are more than 2 new comments. The next morning my grad students highlight all funny comments and leave it on my desk by mid morning. It's a great system.
posted by special-k at 10:35 AM on December 2, 2010 [7 favorites]

I print every Mefi thread each night...

No, no, she said unnecessary printing!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:45 AM on December 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

sunshinesky: "How much unnecessary printing is there, really?"

I regularly receive web edits as printed out screen shots with scrawled annotations. There's a tall pile of old ones sitting next to me right now.

*grumble*
posted by brundlefly at 10:48 AM on December 2, 2010

If you print an email where I work, you get "protect the environment; think before you print" appended to the bottom of it.

One time, I printed an email, and it ran onto a second page because of that. Just one sad piece of paper, with "protect the environment; think before you print" on it, and nothing else. Oh, the irony.

So with that in mind, I don't think this is such a terrible idea.
posted by Acey at 10:49 AM on December 2, 2010 [13 favorites]

No, no, she said unnecessary printing!

The grad student who proofs my comments is now failing her quals.
posted by special-k at 10:51 AM on December 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

Acey: One time, I printed an email, and it ran onto a second page because of that. Just one sad piece of paper, with "protect the environment; think before you print" on it, and nothing else. Oh, the irony.

That's fantastic. Did you frame it?
posted by theodolite at 10:56 AM on December 2, 2010

Up next: special non-ISO sized anti-global warming screws.
posted by GuyZero at 10:56 AM on December 2, 2010

The way to reduce printing is not by artificially halting it through some forbidding document flag. It's by making it easier to use documents without having to print them out. ePaper displays have great potential here.

This file format (really, another file format?) might reduce printing in workplaces that are insane enough to adopt this, but at the cost of another greviously limited resource that fewer people are working to conserve: human capacity for frustration.
posted by JHarris at 10:56 AM on December 2, 2010 [3 favorites]

Genuine question here: if removing the print option forced, say, 50% of the people who would otherwise print things to instead use extra time on their computer to read them, would this really be a net gain for the environment? Or would the extra power used trump the saved paper?
posted by googly at 11:11 AM on December 2, 2010

This file format (really, another file format?) might reduce printing in workplaces that are insane enough to adopt this, but at the cost of another greviously limited resource that fewer people are working to conserve: human capacity for frustration.

Save a tree, kill a coworker.
posted by Stagger Lee at 11:15 AM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

Do you work in an office? Either mine is an anomaly or a whole fucking lot.

In an effort to be more green, my company set all of our printers to automatically print everything two sided, in an attempt to use less paper.

To alert us of this, they printed out a memo detailing the reasons for it, and left a copy of it on each and everyone's desk. Two pages, single sided.

Here I'll note that this is a telecommunications company, where nearly everyone has multiple ways of receiving electronic correspondences.
posted by quin at 11:28 AM on December 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

special-k: "
I think this is just going to be a pain. How much unnecessary printing is there, really? What if I don't have access to a computer on a regular basis and need the document in a solid copy? Give me a break...

I print every Mefi thread each night. But I always check recent activity first to make sure there are more than 2 new comments. The next morning my grad students highlight all funny comments and leave it on my desk by mid morning. It's a great system"

You really need a better system.
posted by mindless progress at 11:30 AM on December 2, 2010

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooh, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah
posted by blue_beetle at 11:46 AM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

The best deterrent I've seen is to append the user's name, date, as a footer on the printed document, so everyone can see who abandoned 500 pages of cat pictures.
posted by benzenedream at 11:52 AM on December 2, 2010

Anyone who would abandon 500 pages of cat pictures would probably declaw 500 pages of cat pictures.
posted by DU at 12:07 PM on December 2, 2010 [3 favorites]

Paper is a renewable resource.

I'm sure there'll be a .wwf to .pdf converter in about 2 minutes.
posted by CarlRossi at 12:07 PM on December 2, 2010

From the "How Can I Participate?" page, under "Functions":

A page is automatically added to the end of each WWF document, explaining the purpose of the new WWF file format to first-time users (this function can be deactivated).

So if someone sent me a .wwf file, I would have to go to this silly website, download and install this silly software, and then still be subjected to a page of what is undoubtedly well-intentioned-yet-preachy explanation? Brilliant!
posted by Remy at 12:09 PM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I am using this post as an excuse to link to my favorite image.
posted by jewzilla at 12:41 PM on December 2, 2010 [5 favorites]

This is great. If there's one thing I know about computer culture, it's that people using computers absolutely love being told they can't do something on their computer.

You know what else is great? Expanding the stereotype that environmentalists are preachy, pretentious asshats.

You know what's even better than those things? When I can't print a document at the office because of some arbitrary "security" restriction. I was hoping to have that functionality everywhere I go now.

I short, I just kicked a panda in the ovaries, because it felt good.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:51 PM on December 2, 2010

Dear creators of new, restrictive formats: Please stop hurting the world. Thanks.
posted by odinsdream at 1:58 PM on December 2, 2010

I notice that a lot of "old people" at my office will print up websites so they can read them later.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 2:00 PM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've told this story before, but I had a client once who used to do that. He was an attorney, and he was very particular about the stock photos he wanted us to use on his stuff. So he would go to his favorite stock photo site, print out the pages (in color!) of the photos he wanted me to buy, scan the pages to PDF, and email the PDFs to me. He wasn't even that old, probably forty at most. I begged him to just send me links, but he wouldn't hear of it.

I actually kind of like the idea of a "think before you print" prompt, but not as something that just creates a second-page orphan that ends up getting printed anyway. Maybe just an "are you sure you really need a hard copy of this? Y/N" alert.

Paper is a renewable resource.

Maybe the filetype we really need is .hmp, which, when you try to print it out, pulps a batch of hemp and queues your document to be published as soon as the sheets are dry.
posted by Gator at 2:09 PM on December 2, 2010

Meh. They should just require users to register a credit card and then set up a special fund where a dime goes to the WWF for each page printed.
posted by Ufez Jones at 2:15 PM on December 2, 2010

Something to bring up at the next Laser Jet Junkie intervention.
posted by Israel Tucker at 4:18 PM on December 2, 2010

That's fantastic. Did you frame it?
posted by theodolite at 6:56 PM on December 2 [+] [!]

Unfortunately not. I'd like to think it was recycled eventually, destined to return as a flyer promoting green initiatives, or something equally fitting.
posted by Acey at 2:22 AM on December 3, 2010

People are just going to e-mail these things to their gmail account and get Google to send them a printout.
posted by straight at 1:14 PM on December 3, 2010

One time, I printed an email, and it ran onto a second page because of that.

Set your printer settings to double-sided by default.
posted by shakespeherian at 3:22 PM on December 4, 2010

This is severely retarded.
posted by MrLint at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2010