What are the minimum margins most printers can handle

Question

Im creating pdfs server side with lots of graphics so maximizing real estate is a must but at the same time ensuring users printers can handle the tight margins is a must    Does anyone have an idea what safe values I can use for the margins when authoring the pdfs  In the past Ive used work and home printers with margins of about one cm with no problems but of course I can t take this as the defacto minimum    Oh and I don t really want to allow the user to specify the margin  50  lazyness 50  will get complicated    Ive googled but couldn t find anything concrete   average minimum margin printing

User · Answer

You shouldn t need to let the users specify the margin on your website - Let them do it on their computer   Print dialogs usually  Adobe and Preview  at least  give you an option to scale and center the output on the printable area of the page   Adobe   Preview   Of course  this assumes that you have computer literate users  which may or may not be the case

User · Answer

For every PostScript printer  one part of its driver is an ASCII file called PostScript Printer Description  PPD   PPDs are used in the CUPS printing system on Linux and Mac OS X as well even for non-PostScript printers   Every PPD MUST  according to the PPD specification written by Adobe  contain definitions of a  ImageableArea  that s a PPD keyword  for each and every media sizes it can handle  That value is given for example as  ImageableArea Folio 8 25x13   12 12 583 923  for one printer in this office here  and  ImageableArea Folio 8 25x13   0 0 595 935  for the one sitting in the next room   These figures mean  Lower left corner is at  12 12   upper right corner is at  583 923    where these figures are measured in points  72pt    1inch   Can you see that the first printer does print with a margin of 1 6 inch  -- Can you also see that the next one can even print borderless   What you need to know is this  Even if the printer can do very small margins physically  if the PPD  ImageableArea is set to a wider margin  the print data generated by the driver and sent to the printer will be clipped according to the PPD setting -- not by the printer itself   These days more and more models appear on the market which can indeed print edge-to-edge  This is especially true for office laser printers   Don t know about devices for the home use market   Sometimes you have to enable that borderless mode with a separate switch in the driver settings  sometimes also on the device itself  front panel  or web interface    Older models  for example HP s  define in their PPDs their margines quite generously  just to be on the supposedly  safe side   Very often HP used 1 3  1 2 inch or more  like  24 24 588 768  for Letter format   I remember having hacked HP PPDs and tuned them down to  6 6 606 786   1 12 inch  before the physical boundaries of the device kicked in and enforced a real clipping of the page image   Now  PCL and other language printers are not that much different in their margin capabilities from PostScript models   But of course  when it comes to printing of PDF docs  here you can nearly always choose  print to fit  or similarly named options  Even for a file that itself does not use any margins  That  fit  is what the PDF viewer reads from the driver  and the viewer then scales down the page to the  ImageableArea

User · Answer

Every printer is different but 0 25   6 35 mm  is a safe bet

User · Answer

As a general rule of thumb  I use 1 cm margins when producing pdfs   I work in the geospatial industry and produce pdf maps that reference a specific geographic scale   Therefore  I do not have the option to  fit document to printable area   because this would make the reference scale inaccurate   You must also realize that when you fit to printable area  you are fitting your already existing margins inside the printer margins  so you end up with double margins   Make your margins the right size and your documents will print perfectly   Many modern printers can print with margins less than 3 mm  so 1 cm as a general rule should be sufficient   However  if it is a high profile job  get the specs of the printer you will be printing with and ensure that your margins are adequate   All you need is the brand and model number and you can find spec sheets through a google search

User · Answer

The margins vary depending on the printer  In Windows GDI  you call the following functions to get the built-in margins  the  no-print zone    GetDeviceCaps hdc  PHYSICALWIDTH   GetDeviceCaps hdc  PHYSICALHEIGHT   GetDeviceCaps hdc  PHYSICALOFFSETX   GetDeviceCaps hdc  PHYSICALOFFSETY     Printing right to the edge is called a  bleed  in the printing industry  The only laser printer I ever knew to print right to the edge was the Xerox 9700  120 ppm   500K in 1980

[pdf-generation] What are the minimum margins most printers can handle?

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