NewDeal Hot Tip 1800
Printing
Printing, Scale To Fit
When NewDeal thinks that the page being printed is too big for
the paper in the printer, it displays a dialog box asking whether
you want to print across multiple pages, or scale the page to
fit on one piece of paper.
The Scale To Fit option is an elegant way to solve the problem
of sharing documents electronically among with folks who use
different printers. You can say "yes" to the Scale To Fit option
and know that your printed pages will contain the same information
as the printed pages of the other folks with whom you are sharing
your electronic document.
If you want to avoid the Scale to Fit option, one way is to configure
a NewWrite or NewDraw page for printing on a specific printer by
setting the printer's default top, bottom, and side margins.
Inkjet printers and cut-sheet feeders have mechanisms that hold
on to the paper while printing. This causes a minimum margin that
the software attempts to take into consideration. If your document's
margins are narrower than the software expects as the minimum for
your printer, the Scale to Fit dialog box will appear, as it tries
to save your print job from running onto a second page. If you set
your top and bottom margins to 1" and you have no header or footer,
you shouldn't see the Scale to Fit message in NewWrite. For NewDraw,
1/2 or 3/4" should do the trick.
The trick is to determine your particular printer's printable page
area and then set it as the default.
- In Preferences, Printer, Default Sizes, set all margins to 0 inches.
- In NewDraw, set margins to zero.
- Draw a horizontal rectangle across the top of the page and another
one all the way down the left side.
- Because some printers do not have equal margins, do the same for
the right side and bottom; when you're done you'll have a frame around
the page.
- Print it out and do NOT select scale to fit.
- When the page prints out, there will be white space around each edge,
measure its width: those are your default margins for the printer when
using that particular printer driver.
There are two approaches for setting the default:
- After testing and ensuring their effectiveness--apply the margin
sizes to a new blank document and choose File, Other, Empty Document to
make this the custom size of the startup blank document. Or
- If you use headers and footers in NewWrite, this is the preferred
option. Subtract the margins from the size of the paper. The software
expects minimum quarter inch margins all around, so add one half inch
to the height and one half inch to the width. That's the page size.
Set it in the applications' File, Other, Empty Document, or set it in
Preferences, Printer, Default Sizes...
ndOptions in Release 3
Beginning with Release 3, by default NewDeal examines the document to
determine its real margins and if the document will fit on the paper,
it prints centered on the paper. Older versions of the software
simply checked to see if there was any data within the minimum margins
and, if so, put up the Scale To Fit dialog box.
The new behavior is governed by this key in the GEOS.INI file:
[configure]
ndOptions = 1
To use the older minimum margin behavior, change the one to a zero:
ndOptions = 0
On some printers, the older behavior may work better when printing
envelopes.
For more information, click the help (question mark) button
in the Scale To Fit dialog box.
Return to Index
Last Modified 6 Mar 1999