Re: [authors] Stupid question: A4 vs. Letter in templates

[Jean Hollis Weber]

Janet Swisher wrote:
Ralph Aichinger wrote:
Janet Swisher wrote:
 The template is set up with left and right margins of 1 inch (25.4 mm). 
That "should" print OK on A4, though the text area would be slightly off 
center, because A4 is .24  inch (5.9 mm) narrower than US Letter (and 
therefore the right margin would be smaller). The A4 printout would also 
have some extra space in the bottom margin, because it is longer.

So this is supposed to be a "universal" template for both A4 and Letter
and people in English-speaking "metric" countries are using the same?
Yes, that is the intention, but you are welcome to make your own template 
for A4.

I am asking this, because in German-speaking countries there is *only*
A4 and I am wondering if I should discuss changing the default template
with the other German translators. ...
I think it's reasonable to have a different template for a different 
language. If you want to keep a similar "look and feel", you could start 
with the English template, keeping the style names the same, and just 
change the page size on the OOo page styles.

For documents in English, a big concern in switching a document between US 
Letter and A4 page sizes is that the line breaks and page breaks might 
change, and therefore the same text might end up on different pages in the 
different versions. However, if you're translating it into German, it's 
not "the same text" anymore (in the sense that matters for page layout).
If you experiment a bit with the margins, you can have the page size A4 but 
the printable text area exactly the same as the US letter size. I've 
considered creating an A4 template for use in Australia and New Zealand, 
for example, where we would want the line breaks and page breaks identical 
to the US-letter page version, and only the page size to be different. 
Perhaps soon I'll find time to do that, if someone else doesn't do it first.

I think it's much more important to use a page size that your readers are 
familiar with than to maintain consistency with the English version in 
that regard.
I completely agree.
Regards, Jean