Printing Help?

[J. Landman Gay]

Scott Rossi wrote:
> Does anyone have a primer or tutorial on printing from Rev (revPrint)?  The
> roughly 40 or so properties listed in the dictionary plus print/open
> printing/answer printer is just a tad overwhelming...

I don't know of much that's available outside of Rev's User Guide, but 
the Guide has a full chapter on it that isn't bad.

What I usually do is create a printing stack that I store as a substack. 
Each card represents one print template. When time to print, I open the 
printing stack invisibly at the right card, gather up the necessary 
data, and put it into the fields in the template. It's a big advantage 
if you name your template fields the same as the stack fields; that way 
you can do loops that match the fields up without much trouble.

It's also good to remember that all printers have their own margins in 
addition to the ones you can set in Rev. Most can't print closer than a 
half inch from the top; the side edges vary by printer. Even the ones 
that say they print edge-to-edge usually have a small margin at the 
sides. If you set Rev's margins to 1 inch on each side, and the printer 
can't print closer than a half inch on a side, you'll get 1.5" margins 
on the paper. Make all my left-side template fields butt up against the 
very left edge of the card, leaving no extra space. Do the same at the 
top of the card. That way when you set the printmargins, the top and 
left edges of the printout will be as close as possible to the correct 
amount.

For the type of printing I usually do, that's close enough. But if you 
need more precision, you can use the printRectangle property to find out 
what the printer margins actually are so you can account for them before 
setting your own additional printmargins.

There are so many printing controls, as you say, that it would help if 
we know what kind of printout you're doing. You don't usually need to 
set them all, often the defaults are fine. It mostly depends on what 
kind of output you're going for. For example, if you aren't printing 
booklets, you can usually ignore gutters, two-sided printing, etc.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com