Repeat request: Can anyone help with the 'printable area' problem

[Scott Raney]

On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 02:40  AM, Graham wrote:

> I think all I need is something that when activated sets the 
> printMargins to the selected printer's minimum rather than 72 points 
> all round (which in fact is more than the minimum margins of any 
> printer I've ever used). Of course having captured this info, one 
> would still be free to alter the printMargins, or have the user alter 
> them via a Page Setup dialog as usual.
>
> What I really can't understand is why other people don't want this 
> facility as much as I do. There are a million different kinds of 
> applications out there, and I guess a good few of them don't have much 
> paper output.

Probably more like a good half, or more.  More importantly, only a
good 1% or so of those that do print care about the printable paper
size.  In my 25 years of computer experience *I* have never cared
about this, and that includes 10 years as an academic doing posters
and such with drawing packages that split documents across multiple
pages.  Since you've always got to cut and paste in these cases
anyway, what do I care if I've got to trim off 1/2 an inch or whether
the printer only requires I trim off 1/8 of an inch?  Now if there
were actually printers that print to the edge of the paper, it might
be nice to know this so that you can save the user the trouble of
assuming they'll have to cut and paste to make a big page out of a
bunch of small ones.  But AFAIK there aren't any such printers...

I've added this to the engine feature request list, but note that this
is only the first request for this I've seen in 11 years of engine
development, so I'm thinking your expectations in this area may need
some adjustment because it seems you really may be the only person who
cares about this ;-)
  Regards,
    Scott

PS: note that the printMargins don't apply when using "print..into
rect", which is what all non-trivial apps are going to use anyway.  So
changing the behavior of printMargins wouldn't solve your problem
anyway.  A new property would be required instead.

********************************************************
Scott Raney  raney at metacard.com  http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...