[reportlab-users] Trouble printing at the edge of a letter format

[Henning von Bargen]

> From: "Ken Arneson" <arneson.ken at gmail.com>

> Subject: [reportlab-users] Trouble printing at the edge of a letter format

>

> Hello,

> I have an application where I need to print a line around the edge of an 

> 8.5

> x 11 inch letter page.  Even though I print at position 0,0 and the line

> appears on screen in the right position, the page prints the line about a

> half inch higher.  It's as though there is some margin setting I need to

> adjust.

> Anyone know how I can print a border on the absolute edge of the paper -

> overriding any margin?  I need to print in the space place that a web

> browser print places the URL of the page being printed.

> Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

>

> Ken


Hello Ken,
Printing PDFs from Windoze is something that's out of scope of ReportLab.
We are using PDFs as a platform-independent report format in out commercial
application and we had to learn that printing PDFs on MS Windows can be
tricky.

It really depends on the application that you are using.
I guess that you are printing from Adobe Reader.
The default print settings within Adobe Reader are such that
"automatically resize and rotate page to fit paper size" is set.
This will shrink the printed page such that the hardware margin
is kept free.
You can see in the print settings dialog that the page will be printed
at some 90 % of the original size.
In order to print the page exactly as-is, you'll have to uncheck the
checkbox so that the page is printed at 100% size.
Of course your paper should have the correct size, then.

If you are looking for other good software for printing PDFs from Windows,
you should check the PDF Printer API from www.pdf-tools.ch - however, this
is is a commercial application.
(I am not advertising it, we are just using it successfully in our own 
commercial product).

HTH
Henning