Printing: font size not printing correctly

[BettinaK]

Hi, I hope you can help.

Background: I am running a relational database over an NT network (30-40 users). Server is version 5 (on NT) clients are 5.0v3 on NT, Win 98, Win 2K. We use a number of printers (mostly HP, but some Apple laserwriters).

Problem: In a correspondence db, Preview is not displaying exactly what is being printed. The font is being shrunk by between 2-3 points which makes it impossible to include page x/y in the footer, and quite often the final page is blank (or worse: contains the last couple of lines). This does not appear to be client-specific, & is certainly not layout-specific.

Has anyone come across this before? Is there a solution??

Thanks in advance

Bettina

[LiveOak]

WYSIWYG is very problematic in the PC world. It seems to be the worst with some inkjet printers where preview isn't even close to where page breaks occur. I would try to choose a font which is native to all the printers. Where it is an option, standardizing on fewer printer types helps. Also, increase margin, footer size, etc. to make positioning less critical.

-bd

[BettinaK]

Unfortunately all fonts are resident on the printers & I have no option with the margins & standardised printer types. However, I will test on the apple printers.. Thanks

[mborgens]

This is one of the biggest complaints I have regarding FM. You would think after approximately 15 years on the market (and an Apple product for much of its life; I say that because Apple was King for WSIWYG) that they would have developed a FM font that would at least minimize the issue. I'm assuming it's not possible or they would not want to put so many people in misery.

I do have some ideas for improved view (not that I don't mind complaining about this issue for hours).

1. I find it best to design on PC and check on a MAC (I don't follow this because I've used a MAC forever and old dogs .... I do, though, always check my work on a PC before I publish). Because of this issue I now always have 2 computers on my desk.

2. Fonts. Limit your use. I tend to work with Times and Helvetica/Times New Roman, Arial - MAC/PC respectively. I'm sure there are others out there.

3. Big pain, but the only way I build now. When I create a layout I build it line by line and break it down to not include tabs within lines. What I mean is if I have a text block in my layout that is 4 lines long, I make it into 4, 1 line text blocks. This stops the shifting up and down of layouts between MAC and PCs. I even go to the effort of not including tabs (big spaces) in a line of text. If I need a tab space, I break it into two blocks.

4. Try to minimize the size of your input text blocks. I have found the longer the block, the greater the difference (sometimes there is no way around big blocks.

5. Get rid of all the PCs and most of the problems will go away. I'm kidding because I can remember a time while developing solely for the MAC and still needing to develop 3 solutions; 1 for dot matrix, 1 for ink Jet and 1 for laserprinters.

Hope this helps.mb