Hello John and Paul, Have you looked at the preferences for TextEdit? If you bring up the preferences from TextEdit using Command-comma, the first tab, for "New Document", lets you specify format as either plain text or rich text with radio buttons, then next lets you specify the window size width and height in characters and lines entered into text boxes. These set the default specifications applied when you open a new TextEdit window. Leave the radio button for "wrap to page" un-selected. Then press Command-W to close the preferences window.
In order to output from TextEdit to your printer with the specified number of characters and lines per page, you want your window settings to be used for formatting, rather than trying to fit as many characters of the default font size onto a printed page. This is why we did not select the radio button for "wrap to page" and are instead using the "wrap to window" format, so that lines will break after the last word that appears in your TextEdit window. The final step is ensuring that when you print the document with Command-P, the line breaks set by your "wrap to window" format are preserved. The TextEdit Help describes that by default TextEdit prints contents within a document’s margins, regardless of whether you wrap text to the margins or to the window when you edit the contents. If you wrap text to the window when you edit and want the line breaks in a printed document to match those in the document window, after issuing Command-P to print, uncheck the box for “Rewrap contents to fit page” in the Print window. If this check box is not displayed, navigate to the "Show Details" button and press it (VO-Space), Then navigate past the paper size and orientation information. A "TextEdit" pop up button should be set, which you can select if this is not the case, and the check box entry for "Rewrap contents to fit page" should be listed. Make sure this box is unchecked before pressing the "Print" button. Additional details: 1. You can switch back and forth between "Wrap to Page" and "Wrap to Window" formatting modes with Command-Shift-W. If you are already in "Wrap to Window" mode, then when you check the "Format" menu on the menu bar (Control-F2 or VO-M to navigate to the Apple menu; press "F" to go to the "Format" menu and arrow down), you should see the option to change this (i.e., "Wrap to Page"). Similarly, if you are in "Wrap to Page" mode, the "Format" menu should display the option for "Wrap to Window". 2. You can check that there are only a few words per line in the window by using VO-Down arrow to navigate by lines. 3. Adjusting font size in the TextEdit window (with Command-hyphen to make letters smaller or Command-equals to make letters bigger) will change the number of characters per line. (I don't know why you would do this unless you were showing the document to a low-vision user and wanted to enlarge the displayed fonts. If you work with someone who needs large fonts, just select a large type font to begin with in the preferences for new windows in TextEdit) HTH. Cheers, Esther On Feb 27, 2012, at 4:47 AM, John Sanfilippo wrote: > Oo, I have much the same concern, so I'm looking forward to hearing more > about this. > > js > > > On Feb 27, 2012, at 9:42 AM, Paul Erkens wrote: > > Dear listers, > > I have an old braille printer that is not attached to my mac. To emboss > something, all I have to do is create simple plain text files with 27 lines > per page, and no more than 30 characters per line. Looking at how text edit > handles printing however, that works with inches or centimeters, and in > general, with a bitmap, the size of the paper you choose to print on. > Characters, lines and the whole page can be scaled. > > However, what I need for my braille printer is to ignore scaling, and tell > text edit to wrap to the next line after 30 characters max, and a page break > after 27 lines, no matter which font size etc I choose, because fonts etc are > not important in braille. > > Once a text document has been loaded in text edit, how do I reformat it, so > that it writes a carriage return line feed pair at the end of each line of 30 > characters most, and a page break, control l, at the end of 27 lines? Very > interested. I'm now doing it all by hand, but since I received 8 songs from > my choir all at once, I'm hoping to learn an easier way to reformat typed > text into something my braille printer can handle. That braille printer is on > windows, but I'd rather do all the preparations in text edit, than on a > windows machine. Is it possible to make text edit do what I need here? > > Paul. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
