On 10/02/16 12:01 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 2/10/16 8:28 AM, Gary Dale wrote:
On 09/02/16 11:39 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 2/9/16 2:23 PM, Gary Dale wrote:
On 09/02/16 03:23 PM, Dave Liesse wrote:
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried
(although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments
rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of
setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with
the
template specs didn't do the job.
I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are
minor. For
small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a
little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the
page.
I think this could also occur due to printer's paper feed abilities.
In this case, the error is consistent.
Are you referring to the page slipping on the rollers? That would likely
produce inconsistent results. If the labels are simply off consistently,
that would be the top margin. If they vary consistently down that page,
that would be vertical pitch.
Slippage in the rollers is what I was thinking of.
In my case, the error is consistent, so slippage is not problem.
Telling the printer where to actually start the printing appears to be
the issue. We'll call it the top margin for convenience, but even
that has it's own issues. Since the driver is TWAIN, the brand of
printer shouldn't make a difference as long as the printer
manufacturer doesn't screw up the driver.
Time to "expand our horizons". (Sounds like a motivational speaker,
doesn't it? LOL)
LO's built-in template, displayed on the screen, is correct. The
paper's top margin is .5" on the screen and in real life. Positioning
of the text is also correct, as displayed on the screen.
Only printing is in error.
Now... Suppose you are creating X number of label designs for someone
else. They don't have LO, how to you get the labels to them? Today,
I think almost everyone's answer would be PDF.
Fair enough, but that doesn't work either. If you create the PDF with
the default template settings, which are correct, the resulting PDF
file is also in error. I tried it. Same vertical offset issue.
So you change the top margin, create the PDF, and yep, labels print
correctly.
What's wrong with this?
In the above scenario, the recipient of the PDF may/can/will look at
the labels before printing them, to see if they are correct. (If they
don't, they aren't doing their job.) Guess what? They'll see the top
margin error, more easily spotted if you have a vertical ruler option.
If you send a PDF based on the correct template (the one supplied by
LO), the printing will be off. If you send a PDF based on a modified
template, the visual display on the screen will be off.
In this situation, LO falls on its face in providing WYSIWYG... What
You See Is What You Get. One of the principals in modern computers.
What is displayed on the screen is what is supposed to come out of the
printer or other device.
This is no different than if you had the font set for 12 points, but
the output to either screen or printer was 16 points. Not a good
thing in the long run.
PDF is a great way to exchange documents but it has an interesting print
option (usually) of shrinking to fit the printer margins. If you send a
PDF label set, you need to remind the recipient to print them full size.
I've run into this problem several times where my carefully crafted PDFs
aren't printed the way I designed them.
There used to be a problem with multi-column labels but they seem to
have redone the label specification to correct that. When creating
labels, there is "Format" tab that lets you adjust the label
properties.
In its new incarnation, it is easy to use and gives you exactly
what you
need to adjust the properties of incorrectly specified common label
formats down to 1/100 of an inch.
In the end, I'll probably do this.
You can specify the top margin, label height and vertical pitch (the
last two may be different if there is space between the labels) and do
the same for the left margin, label width and horizontal pitch. They
also allow you to specify the page size and the number of rows and
columns.
If you think a label isn't defined correctly, fix it. Also, file a bug
report so that the developers can fix it for everyone. It's better to
light a candle or two than to curse the darkness.
In this case, the label spec is correct. Font design will have to
have a factor in this someway too, I suspect.
It shouldn't unless LO calculates the position of the next label
relative to the end of the previous text. It would seem more natural
(and simpler) to calculate in absolute terms.
Upon retrospect, I agree. But it is something you have to be
cognizant of when designing the label, as it can affect the apparent
vertical centering of text on the label. Which can effect what you
think may be happening with label output. In my case, the label
includes a graphic, which is unaffected by text positioning. Makes it
easy to figure out where the problem is likely to be.
Another overall negative effect of this problem is, you have to ask
yourself, if this is broken, what else in the suite is broken?
Especially if you are using LO to make a living. Is there another
feature I use in Writer that doesn't work correctly? What if one or
two functions in the spreadsheet calculate incorrectly? What if Base
occasionally mangles your data?
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in
it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they
finally admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to
the rare occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>
I've yet to find software that is perfect (except of course for what I
develop ;) ). Big suites like LO will have the occasional bug but
I've never found one that was more than an annoyance.
--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted