Re: gEDA-user: Scaling of ps output

[John Eaton <john.eaton@hp.com>]

Actually that's normal. My job is designing printers and I see that
happen all the time. Here's the problem.

You want to draw and print a 8.5 X 11 schematic.

1) you can draw it as a 8.5 X 11 or as 11 X 8.5

2) you can print it as portrait or landscape

3) you can print it on letter or A size paper

4) you can tell the printer it is portrait or landscape


This gives you 16 possible ways to print and the vast majority
will NOT give you what you expect. It will either be cut off or
shunk into one corner. You have several serial processes all
trying to do something right and if one of them in the middle
is misconfigured then the print job is messed up

Thats the easy case. Going to the really usefull sizes simply adds
a few more choices to the equation. I have some plotter's here at
work that I still haven't gotten to work right

Here are some of my suggestions.

Using the standard templates will usually give you something "close"
if you can figure out all the right switches and settings. I have resorted
to trying 32 possible test cases just to find out which 4 really worked.

I do my own templates because "close" is not close enough. When I
draw a line 10 units long on the screen then it better be 1.00 inches
on the paper. 0.95 won't cut it.

Each printer you use will need it's own template. Different printers have
different size print zones. Laserjets are different from inkjets and 
roll fed
plotters are a world unto themselves. They can print anysize and you simply
cut out what you need. Forget paper size. You want your template to
create the largest possible box on your printed page. Unless it's roll fed
or a borderless photo printer then that will be less than the paper size.
I build my templates to match my printers actual print zone. Anything 
less is
wasted space.

Create a test template for each printer and orientation that you wish to
support. Place two "Anchors" in the upper_left/lower_right (or lower_left/
upper_right) corners of your drawing area. These are small dots or short 
lines
that simply define's your printing area. Nothing should be placed outside
these anchors and once your template is set up they will never move.
Start out making a perfect square.

Draw a square box slightly inside of the anchors and put a couple of 
sample components
inside the box. Now print it to a ps file using Letter 8.5 X 11 , 
extents no margins,
portrait. I design all my templates to work with my default gschem 
settings and
I remove any papersize that doesn't work so I CAN'T pick a wrong value

Send the ps file to your target printer. I try to use default printer 
settings and If I can't
then I script it to keep track of all the right switches.

Look at the printout. If the components are not in the correct 
orientation then try your
printjob switches to rotate your printout. Once that is right( and 
scripted) then you will
have a square that is almost maxed out in one direction and wasted space 
outside the
square in the other.

The next steps will require some iterations of moving the anchors and 
reshaping the
square

You want to stretch the square into a boundary box that gives you the 
MAXIUM print
area on your paper.

You also want to expand it in both directions until your components 
shrink to their smallest
readable size

I also calibrate the size to a ruler. The largest box that I can fit on 
the short side of ledger
paper is 10.525 inches so I make that side fit 210.5 grid points. Once 
that is fixed then
I adjust the anchor points to finetune the boxes size and placement

Once I am happy I add a title block, strip out the components , save it 
as my template
and WRITE down all the steps for printing.


John Eaton

























Mohammad Shahab Sanjari wrote:

> I also have the same problem.
> The only configuration that works for me is using A2 titleblock and print it on an A4 file, and 
> naturally on A4 paper.
> if I try to print a schematic page with an A3 title block on it, on an A3 post script file, I only get a 
> portion of the schematic. It becomes again good if I print the same A3 titleblock on an A4 file.
>
> could this be a bug?
> s.
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 01:13:47PM -0700, Matt Ettus wrote:
>  
> > I am trying to use 11x17, extents w/ margins, landscape.  I'll email
> > you the ps file it generates.
> >
> > Matt
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 09:03:40 -0400, Ales Hvezda <ahvezda@moria.seul.org> wrote:
> >    
> > > > > > I'm having difficulty getting a ps printout of my schematics to print
> > > > > > properly.  They aren't being scaled to fit.
> > > > > >            
> > > > > Do you mean they're not exactly 1:1 scale?  Or, they're bigger than
> > > > > the paper but not being shrunk to fit on the printable portion?
> > > > >
> > > > >          
> > > > The latter -- they don't fit on one page.
> > > >        
> > >        
> > >        I haven't seen anything like this and I don't think the code has
> > > changed, however...
> > >
> > >        What paper size are you printing to and what size title block?
> > > Also, what orientation (portrait or landscape)?
> > >
> > >                                                                -Ales
> > >
> > >
> > >      
>