[comp.sys.mac.programmer] Need help setting rPage

john@crcaus.cactus.org (John R. Miller) (07/17/89)

Can anyone give me a hint on how to go about changing rPage in
order to print closer to the perfs?  In can't be totally trivial
as I'm told at least one commercial data base just skips every
eleventh one when printing mailing labels.  All I get out of IM
is an admonition not to change anything outside of the job
subrecord (top of page II-150).  Sure enough, simply changing
rPage doesn't seem to have any effect.

Thanks much for any help you can give.

-- 
John R. Miller							  512/331-0155
13102 Briar Hollow Dr.					john@crcaus.cactus.org
Austin, Texas  78729			   ...cs.utexas.edu!bigtex!crcaus!john

casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) (07/18/89)

In article <270@crcaus.cactus.org> john@crcaus.cactus.org (John R. Miller) 
writes:
> Can anyone give me a hint on how to go about changing rPage in
> order to print closer to the perfs?

The reason you get no effect by setting rPage is that the Printing Manager 
calculates this rectangle, using the paper size and the printer's inherent 
characteristics.  With the exception of normal-mode printing on the 
ImageWriter II, the calculated rPage is in fact the largest rectangle that 
the printer is physically capable of printing on the selected paper size.

The exception is that on the ImageWriter, 1/2" at the top of the page is 
excluded from the rectangle, for reasons having to do with the feed 
mechanism.  However, the user can select the "no gaps between pages" 
option and then rPage will be calculated to go all the way up to the top 
of the page.  If this is what you mean by printing closer to the perfs, 
then this is the only way to do it.

Sermon: there is a reason why Apple tells you not to put values into 
fields in the print record, except for the few fields whose usage is 
spelled out.  Anything you do by jamming values into, say, rPage will 
probably fail; and if it doesn't fail with the particular printer you're 
working with, it'll probably fail with a different kind of printer; and if 
it doesn't fail now, it's guaranteed to fail with a later version of the 
Printing Manager (such as the 7.0 release).

David Casseres

Exclaimer:  Hey!