Is there a way to save an entire thread as a PDF? Or even a way to print a thread (other than PrintScreen) that gets just the thread and not the rest of the thread.
To have a PDF conversion done at server-end it would likely cause high server load. You could use a third-party website like: http://www.web2pdfconvert.com/ (We did query some years ago about the potential of archived versions of the forum being made available but that was back when Dave was running it)
I am surprised that converting a thread to a PDF would cause such a load, but I am not questioning it. If there were an option to print the thread (as opposed to the whole screen), users could use one of the many PDF printers to do the conversion on their machines. I do that frequently with many websites. I happen to use PrimoPDF, but there are many others.
That's not too bad if the thread does not exceed one page. But if the thread spans many pages, you only get the current page.