Feature Request: Margins

[lekv]

First: It's a great package and helps me A LOT! Thanks for all the work that went in it.

I tried printing cards with it and noticed, that almost no laser printer is capable of printing margin-free. Also I'd accept smaller cards, as long as they were equally sized. Hence my feature suggestion:

Add a parameter, that allows page margins to be specified as well as the grid size (e.g. 2x4). Then layout the specified page grid into the printable area. After printing you will have to cut all cards on all sides and the cards will be smaller, but you end up with equally sized, fully printed cards.

I don't know enough latex to create that feature myself, but it would help.

[kellertuer]

Hi levk, thanks for the response and your idea, i had that feature in one of the first versions, but when i changed - i think - the package to draw the marks for cutting, i could'nt get that to work again, so i removed that from the package up to now.

The reason is quite easy: You can just „scale down to fit print area“, which is a common option in many print dialogues. At least the ones i'm aware of (Linux/KDE, Mac OS X, Windows XP/Vista). So the page margins of the printer are respected and the cards are scaled down, the one thing missing are the outer borders, those might be checked by looking at the ends of the given printing marks.

I don't know exactely what you mean by the grid size, because up to now you just specify which size you want the cards to be (e.g. Din A6) and the grid on the print-layout is detemined uniqely, because the only way to arrange A6 on A4 is a 2x2 grid. If you could be a little more specific on that one, that would be great.

[lekv]

You're right, I didn't think of just scaling the cards. That will of course allow me to cut them on all sides and end up with slightly smaller cards. I always thought "scaling is not an options, as the cards will shift", but when cutting on 4 edges, that is no problem at all.

By the grid I meant that the cards would end up smaller and you therefore would could specify how many cards you want and have the size calculated automatically, as e.g. A7 would not fit anymore.

Lars

[kellertuer]

Scaling down would even keep the card front and rear to oppose each other as long as your printers margins are symmetric (i.e. leftand right margin are equal and so are top and bottom). Then cutting the border (before the rest of the cutting, i'd recommend) and then the usual cuts would just be fine. At least as far as i tried myself

For the grid you would have to specify a card size (which would not be an Din Ax anymore - i'm german i like norms ;) ) and that must fit the grid in the way you just mentioned (that A7 would not fit it's usual grid anymore). That's also one reason i ommited the scaling-down-feature. The way i implemented that was to scale down the cards as well and hence font sizes shrunk smaller etc. That was'nt very nice. And i think it would be neccessary to think about warnings when card size and grid would cause overlappings. That's much work for that little degree of freedom you gain.