[reportlab-users] Printing Problems

[Andy Robinson]

> Considering the fact that my canvas is exactly 
> 8.5 x 11 and the paper I'm printing on is 8.5 x 11 and scaling is not 
> done then shouldn't I get exactly what I have on the screen on to 
> the page?

Low end printers often distort things - usually a mix of
vertical scale and translation.  And these days not only
Acrobat but also HP print drivers try to apply magic distortions
to fit everything in the printable area of the page, so real
care is needed to have a repeatable setup with all options disabled.

Try printing out a grid with measurements.  You can then use the 
canvas.translate and canvas.scale methods to correct for it on a given
printer.

I have some pretty good contacts with HP these days and was at
a seminar with them yesterday on eForms; I'll try to
find out if they have any data on this, as overprinting forms
is a very common requirement and it's good to know what kinds
of printers are actually calibrated...

God luck,

Andy