Positioning On the Printer

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Positioning On the Printer

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Most printers have an unprintable area, this is a gap from the paper borders, where the printer can not print for technical reasons. The gap at the top-left corner of a page is called the "printing-offset", because the output starting coordinate (0, 0) for printers is exactly the first printable position after the gap. So the starting coordinate (0, 0) is shifted by the gap.

Fortunately printer-drivers can be queried for their printing-offset, so VPE can take it into account,  otherwise the printout would always be misaligned (displaced) by the size of this unprintable area.

As a result, positioned objects (for example text) will always be printed exactly on the given absolute position. This is ideal for printing labels and forms or filling in pre-printed forms. But if you specify coordinates that are within the unprintable area, objects can not be printed or they are clipped.

We know of no printer, which has an unprintable area bigger than 1cm from the top and 1cm from the left, so it is a good idea to use no coordinate smaller than (1, 1) as starting coordinate.

The same applies to the unprintable area to the right and to the bottom of a page. We know of no printer which has an unprintable area bigger than 1cm from the right and 1cm from the bottom, so you should not insert any objects at positions that fall into this area.