Printing question

Having some trouble printing out a book...

It's a booklet (page size 8.5h x 5.5w), including a chapter with a
table inside a frame, both spanning two facing pages. Some, but not
all, of the right side pages are blank on printing this particular
chapter- but only on the face-up pages. The face-down pages (as they
come out of the printer) all print fine. The other chapters print
fine. I know this is pushing the software, but I don't know how to
format the thing differently to do what I want.

I just checked this pub on two different machines, and it shows this
problem on print preview. I'd be willing to go the .pdf route first
(which does at least print all the pages), but I don't know how to get
the booklet output.

HP 4000 printer w/duplexer 

stilman davis wrote:
>Ken Kizer wrote:
>> Having some trouble printing out a book...
>> 
>> It's a booklet (page size 8.5h x 5.5w), including a chapter with a
>> table inside a frame, both spanning two facing pages. Some, but not
>> all, of the right side pages are blank on printing this particular
>> chapter- but only on the face-up pages. The face-down pages (as they
>> come out of the printer) all print fine. The other chapters print
>> fine. I know this is pushing the software, but I don't know how to
>> format the thing differently to do what I want.
>> 
>> I just checked this pub on two different machines, and it shows this
>> problem on print preview. I'd be willing to go the .pdf route first
>> (which does at least print all the pages), but I don't know how to get
>> the booklet output.
>> 
>> HP 4000 printer w/duplexer 
>> 
>One of the printing styles, the dropdown at the bottom of the print 
>dialog is "booklet" that should get you started. You can use this

>printing to file (pdf).

Yep, I've been using that.

>The printing you are doing is something which is regularly done. 
>Sometimes pages don't come out for some reason (only the ps-pdf god 
>knows why), try printing separate pages and incorporate them into the 
>book. Then print the pages from the pdf you create.

Further tinkering shows that the pages drop out of the print preview,
regardless the printer I select (which are the HP, print to file, or
Adobe pdf). They are also missing when I print to file/create pdf.

I've had problems before when frames exceed all the margins on a page,
so I set the margins slightly outside the frames- no joy.

It's only the right page (half-letter size) that doesn't print on a
letter size sheet. The other side of the paper prints (shows) both
pages fine.

The chapter is about 80 pages, so I'm losing about 20 of them. Never
seen such... Then again, I've never spanned two pages with a table in
a frame.

My next attempt is different printer drivers. If I can get it to stop
crashing so much.

>Regards,
>Stilman

Ken Kizer wrote:
> Having some trouble printing out a book...
> 
> It's a booklet (page size 8.5h x 5.5w), including a chapter with a
> table inside a frame, both spanning two facing pages. Some, but not
> all, of the right side pages are blank on printing this particular
> chapter- but only on the face-up pages. The face-down pages (as they
> come out of the printer) all print fine. The other chapters print
> fine. I know this is pushing the software, but I don't know how to
> format the thing differently to do what I want.
> 
> I just checked this pub on two different machines, and it shows this
> problem on print preview. I'd be willing to go the .pdf route first
> (which does at least print all the pages), but I don't know how to get
> the booklet output.
> 
> HP 4000 printer w/duplexer 
> 
One of the printing styles, the dropdown at the bottom of the print 
dialog is "booklet" that should get you started. You can use this 
printing to file (pdf).

The printing you are doing is something which is regularly done. 
Sometimes pages don't come out for some reason (only the ps-pdf god 
knows why), try printing separate pages and incorporate them into the 
book. Then print the pages from the pdf you create.

Regards,
Stilman

stilman davis wrote:

>Dear Ken,
>
>What is crashing so much? This may give a clue to the problems you have.
>
>Some troubleshooting with the publication may be in order.
>Have you tried a save as, or a quick rebuild? Has this stabilised the 
>publication?

I save as daily. Not sure how far to go in rebuilding. I could
probably do a complete job on it without too much trouble.

>It sounds as if something in the right hand pages is a 
>problem.

I'd agree.

>Perhaps the table itself is losing itself on the right hand 
>pages because of some particular settings on the page.

I've tried to keep options to minimum. I don't know what that setting
or settings might be. I did see I'd set the frame to let text flow
through it.

>Is the [table] spanning across the two pages column a on left, column z on 
>right?

Yes.

>Or is the full table width on one page and you are carrying on to 
>the next page? Does this show up alright in page layout view?

Looks gorgeous :-)

>Lots of questions need to be asked to get to the bottom of this problem.
>Can you print/pdf all the individual pages? Try this with some of the 
>pages that drop out.

Print preview is showing me some things I was afraid might come up.
When I ask for one page per sheet, it's pulling the next page, too. In
other words, it should be two of the table columns per sheet, but it's
showing all four (data) columns (actually, there's an extra, narrow
(empty) column that spans the spine, and, consequently, both pages).

This is setting it up to print one 8.5h x 5.5w page per sheet,
landscape, aligned to the left. Doesn't really matter, though, because
if I don't give it enough room for the whole table, it just cuts off
what won't fit on the paper.

>An added problem is that print preview sometimes does not show you what 
>you might get accurately.

Nor does page layout. The rule/underline for the table heading doesn't
show consistently.

>Try printing/pdf-ing for greater accuracy.
>
>Some thoughts, but not necessarily all.

Much appreciated. This one is a real head-scratcher.

>Regards,
>Stilman

stilman davis wrote:

>What is crashing so much?

Usually happens when I'm hopping around in print preview to see if any
pages are missing. But it also happens randomly when I'm filling the
table, and often when I move too fast, clicking the scroll page
buttons.

I don't know if it's machine-related. The laptop has a 2 gig P4
processor, half a gig of memory, a gig of swap file space, decent-fast
video, and a 20 gig hard drive.

It crashes so much lately I've even stopped getting upset. I just save
every couple of minutes. This isn't usual behavior, for me or the
machine. I don't do books that much, but if I do, they don't have
(sideways) page-spanning tables.

I've used VP since 1.1, off and on, and I had a suspicion this table
thing was going to be tricky. But I don't know a better way to format
what I'm doing. I certainly don't know (or have) a better program.

hey maybe I should crank up Gem 3 :-)