printer-physical-offset

Arguments: printer-stream

Returns a position that indicates the "physical" margins outside of which a printer cannot draw. The x coordinate of the position is the device's left hardware margin, and the y coordinate is the top margin. The right and bottom margins will be the same as the left and top margins respectively.

The values are measured in the device's native pixel size, and will typically indicate a quarter of an inch. So for a laser printer whose native resolution is 600 pixels per inch, the position (150 150) would be returned if it can draw anywhere except within a quarter of an inch of the edge of the paper.

The important thing to remember is that anything that is drawn on a printer stream will be positioned relative to this hardware margin. That is, drawing something at position (0 0) will typically draw it at a quarter inch from the edge of the paper.

The recommended way to calculate the coordinate range for drawing on a printer stream is to refer to the left-margin, top-margin, right-margin, and bottom-margin properties of the stream. These values will reflect the user's requested margins (see pop-up-printer-setup-dialog), adjusted for the printer-physical-offset and measured in the stream's current stream-units-per-inch that you may have set. Drawing within the coordinate range specified by these margins will always fit the drawing within the user's requested margins.

While typically there is no need to call printer-physical-offset, it can help you understand why a printer's margin properties are not the values that you might expect.

See also printer-physical-size.

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Created 2010.1.21.