4.2 Printing
MetaEdit+ allows printing
of system
designs through the
Graph | Print... command in the Diagram Editor,
Matrix Editor, and Table Editor, and
File | Print... in the Report Output
tool.
When you print you are first asked for the printer. If you
are printing from one of the editors you are then asked for the scale of the
printout or how many pages you want to print over (see
Figure 4-13). By default, printing is of
the whole used area of the graph, scaled to fit on a single page.

Figure 4-13. Print settings dialog.
You can choose to print
at a different scale or over a certain number of pages in two different ways.
Changing the print settings with the Scale field or Default button
will make the printout have exactly that scale, and the printout will
automatically take more pages if necessary but does not try to fill the whole of
every page.
Changing the settings with the sliders of
Pages wide /
tall fields will make the printout fill the whole of every page in one
dimension. The resulting scale factor is shown in the
Scale
field
. Note that the number of pages you specify may not
all be used, since the printout is always scaled uniformly in the x and y
directions.
You may also print only the visible area of the editor
window by clicking this option in the Print Settings dialog. If you apply this
option, please scale and zoom the editor window before printing.
When you press
OK in the print scale dialog the
output is sent to the printer. You may also use a print preview
tool by pressing
Preview button. The preview tool
shows the output a page at a time. Pressing the
Print button actually
sends the output to the printer and closing the window cancels
printing.
Host printing and PostScript printing
MetaEdit+ supports two types of printing: host printing (only
for Windows platforms) and built-in PostScript printing (primarily for Unix
platforms: in Windows you can use Windows’ own host printer drivers for
PostScript printing). In platforms that support host printing MetaEdit+
automatically opens your operating system’s standard printing dialog: if
you want to use MetaEdit+’s built-in PostScript driver instead, hold down
shift when you select the Print... menu item. If host printing fails for
some reason, MetaEdit+ will try again, using its built-in PostScript driver.
The built-in PostScript driver includes its own printing
tool which offers you the basic functionality to choose the layout and printer
drivers for your printouts.

Figure 4-14. Printing tool.
The printing tool is
illustrated in
Figure 4-14 as it opens
after choosing the print command on non-Windows platforms, or with shift held
down. The Printer: field at the top left shows the name of the current printer
definition, either one of MetaEdit+’s built-in printers or a host printer
name from Windows. The Area settings allow printing only a subset of the total
number of pages, useful when printing from a Report Output Tool. The
Windows
Printer... button selection allows Windows users to choose to print via a
Windows host printer driver: this may be useful if you want to change the
default MetaEdit+ page layout settings. The
Printer... button allows you
to choose one of MetaEdit+’s built-in printer drivers, as in
Figure 4-15. The
Document
Layout... opens a dialog for editing the margins and other page layout
settings: see below in Section
4.2.1.

Figure 4-15. Printer selection dialog.
The printers
available here are:
 | default:
portrait printing to a PostScript
file |
 | default
landscape: landscape printing to a PostScript
file |
 | host:
portrait printing to the Windows default printer. Other than the setting to
portrait, this uses the current default settings in
Windows. |
 | host
landscape: landscape printing to the Windows default printer. Other than the
setting to portrait, this uses the current default settings in
Windows. |
 | report:
initially has the same settings as host. The print...filename command in the
report language prints diagrams using this printer
type. |
These initial settings can be changed;
changes will only have effect within the current MetaEdit+ session.
Printer options
To choose a printer, double-click it in the list, or select it
and press the
Use Selected As Default button. To change the settings for
a printer, select it in the list and press the
Options... button. This
will open a Printer Options dialog, as in
Figure 4-16.

Figure 4-16. Printer options dialog.
 | ‘Format’
allows you to select the paper size (from A2 to
A5) |
 | ‘Type’
is for choosing the type of printer driver (host or generic PostScript: you will
not normally need to work with host printers here).
|
 | ‘Orientation’
allows you to choose whether the printing is in portrait or landscape mode.
|
 | ‘Unix
Printscript’ is mainly only applicable to PostScript printing on Unix
platforms, and specifies the printer command to be used: $file should be used to
represent the PostScript file name which will be written by MetaEdit+ when you
print (normally print.tmp). In Windows, if the Unix Printscript contains any
text at all, the print.tmp file will be sent to the default Windows
printer. |
 | ‘Unit’
allows you to choose which measurement unit is used for the Top Left Inset
settings. |
 | ‘Top
Left Inset’ can be used to define the top left point for your printer: the
first point on the page at which the printer is capable of printing. You may
need to set this if you find that printouts are not aligned properly on the
page, or the extreme edges of the header or footer are
missing. |
4.2.1 Page Layout
MetaEdit+ uses the same page layout settings for all printers.
The settings can be changed in the Page Layout dialog, as in
Figure 4-17.

Figure 4-17. Page layout dialog.
‘Page Style’
chooses whether all pages have the same margins, or whether the margins should
be set differently for even numbered pages (left-hand page of a two page spread)
and odd pages. The first page printed is always number 1, so odd. The settings
for ‘Odd Side’ are only available if you choose Two Sides
here.
The other settings are illustrated in
Figure 4-18. The header and footer are
used for text generated automatically by MetaEdit+, including the graph name,
date and page number.

Figure 4-18. Page layout settings.