Page Sizes and Margins in Print Wizard

Default margins and alignment

Print Wizard by default will begin printing text as far up and to the left as possible (if nice margins are not turned on). Stated another way, the initial margins are the same as the edges of the printable area (described above). So when you print with Print Wizard, text should align with the same place it would if you sent that text directly to the printer, with no printer driver involved.

Also, Print Wizard’s auto-fit logic will, if possible, print the data at 10 characters per inch on the horizontal and 6 lines per inch on the vertical. Again, this corresponds to common printing standards.

Taken together, this means that if you move from printing certain text directly from DOS or Unix, to printing it with Print Wizard, the alignment should generally be the same. If the printout fit nicely onto a preprinted form before, on the same printer, it should continue to do so.

On the other hand, if nice margins is ON, Print Wizard will attempt to provide balanced margins, up to ½ inch.

Setting page dimensions and margins

The and tags, taken together, allow you to specify many aspects of the paper selection and page layout, including paper size, orientation, input bin, orientation, duplex, and margins. Some of these settings will be dependent on your printer’s capabilities.

Paper size can be specified as one of certain standard sizes (identified by name or number), by printer-specific size names or numbers, or by actual dimensions (“X = 8.5in Y=11in”). Note that in Windows NT only, there must be a “form” defined to fit arbitrary dimensions. However, on all other versions of Windows, arbitrary sizes can be specified freely.

Orientation can be specified as “portrait”, “landscape”, or “auto”. In “auto” orientation, Print Wizard will print in portrait, unless the width (in columns) or computed character pitch crosses a certain threshold, as described in “Auto-rotation Logic”, page 71.

If the printer can print both sides of the paper, that can be controlled with the “DUPLEX” parameter. Note that “VERTICAL” and “HORIZONTAL” refer to binding along the long and the short edge of the paper, respectively, without regard to the printing orientation. However, “LEFT” and “TOP” do take into account the orientation.

The printing margins can be specified in the

Note also that the “BOTTOMMARGIN” is specified relative to the TOP of the paper, and the “RIGHTMARGIN” is specified relative to the LEFT edge of the paper.

The PAGESIZE tag can also specify what BIN the printer will pull paper from (by name or number), and the number of COPIES to be printed.

The PAGESIZE tag can also specify the MEDIA; that is, the kind of paper (by name or number). On printers that support this feature, the printer will prompt on its front panel for an operator to insert the specified kind of paper, before the printer will print the job. Or, the printer may decide which bin to draw paper from, based on what it has been told about what kind of paper is in what bin.