Alignment on Postscript Printers

Most Postscript printers have their printable regions factory aligned to a tolerance of 1/8 inch. This means that if you print a page from an application, with a line exactly 1 inch from the physical edge of the page, it may be off by as much as 1/8 inch in one direction or the other. This applies to both vertical and horizontal alignment.

This is not a problem with the Windows Postscript driver. The Windows Postscript driver does not set the position of the printable region; it uses the factory set position. If the factory set position is off, the Windows Postscript output will be off.

You can permanently adjust the position of the printable region on the page in increments of 1/300 inch.

Use the following Postscript code to adjust the position on the page of the printable region:

serverdict begin 0 exitserver
statusdict begin
yyy xxx setmargins
start
^D
^C

The "yyy" above represents the number of 1/300-inch units that you want to adjust the vertical position of the printable region. Positive numbers move the printable region downward, and negative numbers move the region upward.

The "xxx" represents the number of 1/300-inch units that you want to adjust the horizontal position. Positive moves the region to the right, and negative moves to the left.

To adjust the position, follow these steps:

1. Create a test page in your application:

a. Place a vertical line exactly 1 inch from the left edge of the
page.

b. Place and a horizontal line exactly 1 inch from the top edge of
the page.

c. Set both vertical and horizontal margins to 0.

2. Print the page, and measure the amount by which the lines vary from
their ideal 1-inch positions.

3. Convert this measurement to 1/300-inch units. For example, 1/16 inch
would be approximately 19 units.

4. Use an ASCII text editor (such as Notepad) to create a text file of the
above Postscript code. Note that you create the ^D and ^C lines by using
the caret character on the keyboard, not by typing CTRL+D or CTRL+C.
Substitute your measurements for the the "yyy" and "xxx".

5. Copy the file to your printer. Most Postscript printers reprint their

startup pages at this point. If you receive a Postscript error printout,
your printer does not support this type of operation.

Your printable region alignment is now corrected. Reprint your test page to verify this. If you overcorrected, simply repeat this process using new measurements.

The new alignment is written to your printer's nonvolatile memory and the adjustment is permanent.

From MS Knowledge Base
Updated: 1994-03-29
Document ID:
Product: Microsoft Windows Print