Re: Strange PRINTER Coordinates

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Craig Markwardt (craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu) writes:
 
> I believe that the PRINTER device must keep track of the printable
> region on the page.  It's different for different printers.  If you
> look under $IDL_DIR/resource/xprinter/ppds, you can locate lines like
> this in each ppd file:
> 
> *ImageableArea Letter: "18 8 593 784 "
> *ImageableArea Legal: "65 42 547 966 "
> 
> What is unfortunate is that the IDL coordinate system is referenced to
> corner of the printable region rather than the corner of the physical
> page, like most sane page description languages would do.

I'm sure you are right. But what a disaster. Now we
are going to have to write our own printer description
files (and how will we know what printer we are using!!!!)
to get correctly positioned output.

I've got a headache. I'm taking the rest of the 
afternoon off.  

This is the problem with writing a book (or perhaps
it is just a problem with testing your code). You
are going to spend five minutes writing up a little
section and before you know it you are involved in
a &*%$@ quagmire. I'm sure this is why there aren't
more IDL books out there. :-(

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
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