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

[Graham]

Thanks to Alex, Scott and Richard for replying.

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 11:21:23 -0600 Alex Rice <alrice at ARCplanning.com> wrote:

>I agree it is much needed!  Until it is available maybe allow the user
>to adjust margins until there is no clipping?
>
>However, I'm guessing it's a difficult feature to implement. Maybe not
>all printers offer up this information?

Well, I can give examples which seem universal: in Windows, according to a 
very experienced Visual Basic developer I asked this week, this info is 
easily available and is assumed to be provided by all printer drivers. On 
the Mac, the well-known shareware program GraphicConverter offers "use 
printer's maximum" as an option in its margin-setting dialog, and I've 
never know it to fail. Can't speak for Unix.

Scott Raney <raney at metacard.com> also wrote:

>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...

Yes there are - Epson for example make them (check out the Stylus Photo 
2100 for example).


>I've added this to the engine feature request list,

Sincere thanks!

>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 ;-)

Well, maybe so... until other listers speak up, I won't be able to prove 
otherwise! Doesn't anyone have any aspirations to do any form of precise 
page layout using RunRev?


>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.

According to the TD (and also noted by Richard Gaskin in another post):

  The card is scaled to fit the specified pageRect.

This therefore means if I'm printing anything that is supposed to have an 
exact measurement on paper then I need to know that my printing is not 
going to be enlarged or reduced except under my control. (A ruler is an 
obvious example, but I have plenty of others - my current application 
involves printing a paper model on lots of bits of paper for kids to stick 
together afterwards: clearly all the bits must be printed to the same 
scale, and as far as possible each complete part should be on a single bit 
of paper).

>So changing the behavior of printMargins wouldn't solve your problem
>anyway.  A new property would be required instead.

Well, I would gladly accept any way to get the information.

Meanwhile I will tell the teachers to find the maximum paper size by 
experiment.

Thanks for listening.

Graham

---------------------------------------------------
Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France