What's the "Best Practice" for A4 and Letter-size paper?

[Rich S]

Hi, all:

 

What's the "best practice" when it comes to creating reports in FileMaker for both domestic (U.S.) and international users when it comes to paper size? Currently, all the reports in the solution I'm working on are sized for Letter but I could adjust the print margins 1/4" smaller to accommodate the narrower A4 paper...but that doesn't appear--to me, anyway--that it's the best solution.

 

TIA for your input!

[Rick Whitelaw]

As far as I know A4 is not narrower but longer. If you wish to have the option to print on A4 as well as standard letter, simply make another print layout to accomodate the A4 paper size.

[Rich S]

Thanks, Rick. I thought of multiple layouts but considering there are already 70+ report layouts in the current solution I was hoping to avoid doubling that. Then again, report layouts don't take up a lot of space to begin with so it's more of a housekeeping issue than a memory one.

 

As an aside, Letter size paper's dimensions are 215.9 mm x 279.4 mm whilst A4's are 210 × 297 mm, so the latter is narrower and longer than Letter size; I've shorted the (printed) horizontal width for the Letter size reports to 210 so the margins will be the same...at least width-wise, anyway.

[Rick Whitelaw]

Thanks for the info regarding the size! I'm in the music business and A4 size sheets seem to be a European standard rather than North American, but perhaps that's just for music. I have a couple of Contract forms that are designed for US Legal size which I believe is 8 1/2 by 14". Since only two of my many contract forms require that size it wasn't a huge amount of work to make it work. In my experience the main reason to use a "non-standard" paper size is to mimic forms that already exist as hard copy. I makes some organizations more comfortable to see official paper in the format to which they're accustomed. Other than that, Letter size works. It's about the information.

[IdealData]

Maybe you could design the layout to use the 'common' areas of A4/Letter. That is, the smallest dimensions in both directions.