I remain infuriated that I cannot purchase a roll of ascorbic-acid based thermal paper that is the width of either US letter or A4, and perforated at the respective appropriate height.

Thermal printers have far fewer moving parts, no non-paper consumable, barely any maintenance duty, and much simpler construction. By extension, they are much more compact, capable of going long periods of not operating without issue, and are just obviously easier to manage. For most of my purposes in-printing, the negatives of thermal paper (namely, that it will warp with significant temperature fluctuation) are irrelevant; and the negative of ascorbic acid thermal paper specifically (that it's a bit yellow) is wildly outweighed by the benefit that it's dramatically less environmentally worrisome than the phenol-based options which are more common (both to the people handling it and everything else that exists).

I looked into this a while ago, and I'm pretty sure I could buy one thermal printer, with maybe 10 rolls of letter and 10 rolls of A4, and probably be set for my printing needs for the rest of my life (with occasional use of a print shop or library for in-color things or larger prints, etc.). And yet, no one makes ascorbic acid thermal paper in this form factor. It makes perfect sense that they would aim for receipt rolls first (because that's where it'll have the greatest societal impact and safety benefit, and unsurprisingly market), but please! This seems like such a no-brainer to me…

/rant

All the best,

-HG

    [edit]: s/citric/ascorbic/
    [edit]: s/phalate/phenol/ (… what?)