John Chambers wrote: >Actually, there's a consistent problem that no software has a chance >of fixing: Different printers (even of the same model) have different >borders along the edges that they don't print. There's no way that >I've ever seen to ask a printer for the size of its non-printing >borders.
It can certainly be done. Otherwise how would word-processors be able to let you set the size of the margins? On the Mac, when the user does a Page Setup command to set the paper size, the printer returns a record which is stuffed with information, including two rectangles which give the size of the paper and the size of the printable area. Unfortunately, some Epson printers seem to always return the page size for the largest paper they can take, rather than the size of paper which is actually loaded. This can complicate things a bit, but the printable area seems always to be correct. >And when a program like abc2ps is run, it generally can't >know what printer you're going to use. So even if a program could ask >your printer about its border, it doesn't help; you could send the >output to a different printer. Yes, the problem is that in abc2ps you're one stage away from the printing process, so you're always going to have to get that info yourself and supply it to the program, rather than have the program interrogate the printer driver. >The real solution is to get printers to print the entire page. But >you pay extra for that. Most people don't even think to ask about >such things when they buy a printer. If it's at work, someone else >probably made the purchase decision. And so on. It'll probably be a >very long time before printers all print right up to the edge of the >physical page. > >You see the same problem with copiers, of course. You can have a nice >printed page of music, and when you run it through a copier, you find >that some of the edges fade out. > >Good things to bring up when some salesman starts talking about the >high quality of their equipment. Yeah:-) Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
