[reportlab-users] Rendering different sizes on different viewers

[Robin Becker]

Matej Pivoluska wrote:
> Robin Becker napsal(a):
> 
>> Paul McNett wrote:
>>
>>> Paul McNett wrote:
>>>
>>>> #1 and 2 use the same printer driver, all three use the same 
>>>> printer. Can someone tell me what is happening and my workaround 
>>>> options? I can probably standardize on Acrobat Reader but the fact 
>>>> that I specify a certain size but Acrobat is scaling it down is 
>>>> somewhat distressing to me.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, I just discovered that in the Print dialog of Acrobat Reader 
>>> (not the print setup dialog though) there is a default setting to 
>>> scale down the document to fit inside the printer margins. If I set 
>>> to no scaling, the document prints exactly to my spec (and other than 
>>> slight font differences, it prints exactly like the gpdf version - 
>>> cool!). However, I worry that normal users aren't going to be able to 
>>> handle changing this default setting without whining.
>>>
>>
>> Isn't the scaling done by Acrobat likely to be related to what the 
>> printer says it should be? I am constantly annoyed by a 96% scaling, 
>> but I have no idea where the scale comes from.
> 
> 
> 
> The scale comes from some nasty function that looks at the printer 
> driver that says what are the minimal margins for the printer. Probably 
> the same value when MS Word cries about tight margins and nonprintable 
> areas.
> 
> Pdf has more boxes - media box (paper size), crop box (the visible 
> content), bleed box (content clipping in production environment for 
> "zero margin" printouts), trim box (final dimensions after trimming), 
> art box (size of the page including white space intended by the 
> creator). I think that setting media box and crop box correctly (with 
> more than 1/4" margins) will fix the problem with downscaling in Acrobat.
> 
> I do not have the Reportlab installed on the computer that I am using 
> for now but when I tried to find something about these boxes in 
> documentation from reportlab.org site (1.20 version) I did not find 
> anything.
> 
> More information:
> http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/technotes/pdfboxes.pdf
> http://libpdfxx.sourceforge.net/doc/classpdf_1_1page_1_1CInfo.html
> http://designorati.com/dtp/graphics-and-pre-press-4/2005/different-types-of-pdfs/ 
> 
> http://www.boscarol.com/pages/cms/820-pdfx.html (see the illustration 
> half way down)
> 
> Matej
.....thanks Matej; useful info.

-- 
Robin Becker