There's no reason the font size should differ unless the print mode is optimising the content. Are we sure this is not the browser doing "print to fit on page"?

@Jdlrobson - my bad, left this out of the task description: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T172184#3567800

Small font size seems to be caused by the wide table at the end of the article. Adding #content { overflow: hidden; } seems to fix the issue.
The infobox is giant because it contains long lines of text. I don't think we're styling the infobox much. @Nirzar, should we set the maximum limit for the infobox width?

There is a question for nirzar there.

I still find this strange. A table should not impact overall font size so I suspect the browser is doing something to optimise the printed version. @bmansurov do you know why this fixed the problem? Overflow hidden could easily result in hiding some content that should be printed and we should avoid using it imo.

I haven't looked into why the fix works. I'll leave it to whoever works on the task.

@ovasileva to provide more examples

Let's decline or stall and add to backlog. This is the behavior on production with existing styles.

@Nirzar - are you sure? I'm seeing irregular/smaller font sizes on about 1/2 of all articles:

Compare:
http://reading-web-staging.wmflabs.org/wiki/Mexico_City
http://reading-web-staging.wmflabs.org/wiki/Barcelona
To:
http://reading-web-staging.wmflabs.org/wiki/Dog
http://reading-web-staging.wmflabs.org/wiki/Canis

Agree that this is currently happening on production, so I wouldn't consider it a blocker for the current styles, but I think it's a fairly significant readability issue. Is there any way we can only shrink content in tables?

Possible solutions

1. Clip tables/hide content where it overspills. This is an editorial decision and not recommended.
2. Do nothing and live with the aspect ratio shrink - the font size does decrease for these pages but you can also see all the content.
3. Decrease table font-size - this will make tables harder to read, but in some cases may improve things with respect to the rest of the article however will not fix certain situations such as http://reading-web-staging.wmflabs.org/wiki/Barium_nitrate

As @Nirzar points out this is a problem with the existing styles. If content is too wide for the page the entire page will be resized to fit the page.

Let's make a decision.

This is also browser specific behaviour isn't it ?

This is also browser specific behaviour isn't it ?

Is it?

I still say we keep it in tracking or backlog.

I still say we keep it in tracking or backlog.

What is the goal at doing this?
See also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T174955#3588362 from @phuedx
Phabricator is not a great place for tracking things that cannot be fixed or we don't know how to fix. It makes it harder to actually find things that should be worked on.

What is the goal at doing this?

that we know this is an issue but it needs more work to understand the issue and more work to fix. but all of that if we decide to fix this.
just saying, we should decide not to work on this right now and put it in a bucket where put things that needs analysis or more work. aka backlog :)

In T175005#3590066, @Nirzar wrote:

What is the goal at doing this?

that we know this is an issue but it needs more work to understand the issue and more work to fix. but all of that if we decide to fix this.
just saying, we should decide not to work on this right now and put it in a bucket where put things that needs analysis or more work. aka backlog :)

ditto on this. I've been grooming the proton board regularly and I think it's a good place to keep track of this work. In terms of the suggestion in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T174955#3588362 - I think we can (should) do both. I'll make a note to add both of these to the documentation.

Confirmed as same bug.
@Nirzar the developer notes outline the options here that we have thought of so far. Let me know if I can help you understand the problem more and have any other ideas about how to solve.

Unsure if it's only tables. Here's an example with very small font, a lot of math present here however

Yeh it's not just tables- it's any element which has a width bigger than the page width. In the example above the maths images are to blame yes. We should update the description to make that clearer.

I tried a bunch of ways to break the table in print mode as well as all the @page props but none of it works. tried zoom and transforms as well. there has to be a way we break up the table instead of scaling the entire article. the description has possible 2 options but @ovasileva we should explore a third option. breaking tables somehow.