(logo)  Print a document

The print parameters requester

Before AWeb starts printing the current page, you can alter some parameters. You open the print parameters requester with the Project / Print... menu item.

Printer parameters that cannot be controlled in the print parameters window can be changed using the standard Workbench PrinterGfx preferences utility.

Scale (%)

Here you can change the scale for printing the document. Printing at 100% takes up the full paper width. The document is always printed with an 1:1 (square) aspect ratio, because many if not all pages are designed for this ratio. This means that if you use AWeb on a aspect ratio 1:2 screen (like 640 x 256) the printout is about half in height compared to the screen.

Center

When printing with a scale less than 100%, this checkbox allows the printout to be horizontally centered on the paper.

Formfeed

If this is checked, a formfeed is sent to the printer after printing the document. Without formfeeds, you can print several small documents on one sheet of paper.

Print backgrounds

Some documents have a background colour or a background image that may make the printout quite unreadable. This is especially the case when printing in black and white or greyscale.

If this checkbox is not selected, the background of the page will not be printed, but is left white instead. Furthermore, to gain maximum readability all text is printed in black. The printout of embedded images is not affected.

Print in progress

While AWeb is printing the document, the print in progress requester is shown. You can cancel the current print with the Cancel button. Note that it can take a few seconds before the print is actually cancelled and the requester disappears.

While the document is being printed, you can go on and visit other documents. You cannot start another print though, you will either have to wait until the current printout is ready, or cancel it.

When it doesn't print...

If you run AWeb on a screen with more than 256 colours, printing probably doesn't work. This is not the fault of AWeb, but of the printer driver you are using. Most printer drivers today cannot handle bitmaps with more than 256 colours (8 bits).

You will have to change the screenmode that AWeb is using, and optionally select to load a spread palette. Then printing shouldn't be a problem.

As soon as printer drivers become available that can handle more than 256 colours, you can print from screens with more colours directly.

Technically AWeb could convert everything down to 8-bit, but that would be slow (all images on the page have to be remapped), would require more options (like load spread palette, and the option to disable the conversion if the user has a >8 bit capable printer driver), the remapping of datatypes would need a real visible screen instead of the off-screen bitmap AWeb uses now (datatypes need a Screen to remap themselves to), and would of course make the executable bigger. I don't think applications should kludge around a limitation in other software this way.

<- Back to index.