Printing in LX free

[nils.haagenrud]

Hello!

Having a hard time trying to print from LX Free. Just can't get the logic in how to set the zoom an pagesetup. If you keep everything as is, and print in A4, metric, everything seems fine.

An example:
I start a new file with meter scale and change the zoom to 30% to get more space. I copy a stage plot from another file, and paste it in to the new file. Everything looks fine. The plot fits fine into the paper on screen. When i try to print, the preview shows a little figure in the corner of a large paper. It looks like the zoomfactor has worked twice...

Is there a limit on papersize in LX free? It seems like everything goes when I try to change papersize to A3 or zoom to get enough space for my stage.

Started also on scratch with a A3 page. Drew a rectangle almost the pagesize, and pressed cmd/P. The preview shoved the rectangle about 15 - 20% smaller or on a larger page...

It`s not easy to understand the parameters to change to get a readable plot out on paper.

How do I use the number of pages in document-width and -height?

Regards
Nils Haagenrud

[admin]

There are likely two things going on for you. First, when you select A3 using page setup, you are also using information about the capabilities of your printer. Most printers cannot print to the edges of the paper, so there is a minimum margin on all sides. You can control the margins in the Inspector's Document tab. If you set the margin to be less than what the printer is capable of--for instance it is possible to set the margins to zero--the margin field will turn red to warn you. When you try to actually print, the drawing will spill onto additional pages. This is why, with a blank plot and a rectangle at the limit of the drawing area, the print preview will still show space on the page. Unless you have an unusual printer, you will not actually ever be able to print into the minimum margin area with any software. (If your printer is capable of printing to the margins, that information should be conveyed to LXFree by the printer driver and you should be able to set the margins to zero)

The other question is zooming the plot to fit the paper. On a Mac, there are two zoom settings that affect the printed output. One is the printer driver's scale setting. The other is LXFree's zoom setting. LXFree prints at the size of its current zoom. If you zoom in to 2x, everything on the screen will be twice as big and the printed output will also be at double scale. If you have manipulated the size of the drawing using the printer driver to achieve the output size you want, then you'll want to set LXFree's zoom to "Actual Size" before printing.

Because there are other view settings that you might want when printing, such as black and white symbols, it is possible to arrange all of those--including the zoom--once and save it as a view named "print". Then, no matter how you are zoomed in or working with the plot, you can always recall the "print" view and have everything as it was, ready to print.

The other built-in function for helping manage zoom when printing is the "Scale to Single Page When Printing" option found in the popup in the size portion of the Inspector's Document tab. When this option is enabled, the printing will always be scaled so that the final output fits on one page. The output size is constrained by the aspect of the paper and sometimes it will fit better switching from portrait to landscape. But, this setting will do its best to fill the paper.