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Printing is off the mark vertically by about an eighth of an inch vertically, lower on the page than correct.
Labels print fine on Avery 8160.
No adjustments of any kind to the template was made.
LO 4.4.7.2
Hi Ken,
Need more information:
What kind/model label is printing wrong?
What template is being used?
What kind of printer?
Where are printer metrics obtained from?
Thanks, Tom
Printing is off the mark vertically by about an eighth of an inch
vertically, lower on the page than correct.Labels print fine on Avery 8160.
No adjustments of any kind to the template was made.
LO 4.4.7.2
Hi Ken,
Need more information:
What kind/model label is printing wrong?
Avery 8167 
What template is being used?
Libre Office built in template for Avery 8167
What kind of printer?
Samsung CLP 315W color laser
Where are printer metrics obtained from?
Please define printer metrics.
Downloaded and tried 5.0.4. Believe it or not, things are even worse.
Three quarters of the text on each label is now bold. Nothing was bold in the document I created in 4.4.7.2.
Now, maybe there's a way to select all the text in all the labels at one time to change everything to bold or bold off, but I can't find it. So at the moment, I'm changing the attributes one label at a time. CMD-A, CMD-B, spinning beach ball. Repeat next label. Same result. Each and every time.
Exporting as PDF via LO has the same result, labels are off vertically. Saving as a PDF from Apple's print dialogue, same result, labels are off vertically.
I started with LO 3.x.x., labels didn't work then either. I know not what the problem is with the coding, but by now all the kinks should have been worked out. The labels certainly haven't changed.
I just tried it in 5.0.4 Windows 7. Same results.
This is why I no longer recommend LO to anyone, and use it only minimally.
FWFW, it doesn't work in the latest version of Open Office, either. 
I have found that, at least with 8160 labels, LO works whereas AOO does not. I realize that's not your issue, but at least *one* of the label forms seems to work better than with LO than with AOO giving me the impression that the LO developers have been a little more proactive in chasing down label issues than the AOO developers.
I've often found that, with labels, I sometimes have to make small adjustments. For example, I've sometimes inserted a small 8 point blank paragraph at the top of a cell to move the actual address down a smidgen. I sometimes do this in the cells themselves or in the "Label text" dialog box under <File> <New> <Labels> when I'm doing a merge from a database. I've also been known to insert a space or two before each line in the address form, just to move it in from the left margin a bit as so: (I realize the spaces won't show up in an email so I've typed in "<sp>" to represent blank spaces that I insert with the space bar.)
¶
<sp><sp><2014.Sheet1.0.First name> <2014.Sheet1.0.Last name>
<sp><sp><2014.Sheet1.0.Street>
<sp><sp><2014.Sheet1.0.City>, <2014.Sheet1.0.State> <2014.Sheet1.0.Zip>
I realize these solutions are a bit of a cobble, but when you have to get the job done, you just do what you have to do and worry about bug reports later. My problem is that I only do this about once a year (for Christmas cards) and lose interest in the issues once I'm done.
Virgil
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried (although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with the template specs didn't do the job.
I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are minor. For small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the page.
There used to be a problem with multi-column labels but they seem to have redone the label specification to correct that. When creating labels, there is "Format" tab that lets you adjust the label properties. In its new incarnation, it is easy to use and gives you exactly what you need to adjust the properties of incorrectly specified common label formats down to 1/100 of an inch.
You can specify the top margin, label height and vertical pitch (the last two may be different if there is space between the labels) and do the same for the left margin, label width and horizontal pitch. They also allow you to specify the page size and the number of rows and columns.
If you think a label isn't defined correctly, fix it. Also, file a bug report so that the developers can fix it for everyone. It's better to light a candle or two than to curse the darkness.
I have found that, at least with 8160 labels, LO works whereas AOO does
not. I realize that's not your issue, but at least *one* of the label
forms seems to work better than with LO than with AOO giving me the
impression that the LO developers have been a little more proactive in
chasing down label issues than the AOO developers.I've often found that, with labels, I sometimes have to make small
adjustments. For example, I've sometimes inserted a small 8 point blank
paragraph at the top of a cell to move the actual address down a
smidgen. I sometimes do this in the cells themselves or in the "Label
text" dialog box under <File> <New> <Labels> when I'm doing a merge from
a database. I've also been known to insert a space or two before each
line in the address form, just to move it in from the left margin a bit
as so: (I realize the spaces won't show up in an email so I've typed in
"<sp>" to represent blank spaces that I insert with the space bar.)
I've done this a couple of times, and in places other than LO labels. In these cases, the printed error was so small I attributed it to differences in manufacturing of printer and/or label.
¶
<sp><sp><2014.Sheet1.0.First name> <2014.Sheet1.0.Last name>
<sp><sp><2014.Sheet1.0.Street>
<sp><sp><2014.Sheet1.0.City>, <2014.Sheet1.0.State> <2014.Sheet1.0.Zip>I realize these solutions are a bit of a cobble, but when you have to
get the job done, you just do what you have to do and worry about bug
reports later. My problem is that I only do this about once a year (for
Christmas cards) and lose interest in the issues once I'm done.
When it comes to work, I want my "tools" to work, and not have to fiddle-fart around and waste my time. I'd rather pay a reasonable price for something that works rather than fiddle here, fiddle there, fiddle somewhere else to get it to work.
From the aspect of doing the code for this, if this was my work and it didn't work, I'd keep after it until it was fixed. It's a source of pride for me.
I can fiddle with the upper margin and "make it work", a cobble, a workaround, but that's not the point. It's supposed to be a feature, therefore, it's reasonable for a user to expect it to work.
And to recreate a page full of labels isn't going to be fun. Each label has a graphic included, and with no way to Ctrl/CMD A to select all and then copy and paste all, I'll have to do all the labels again.
Unless someone has an answer to that.
Is there a way to swap label templates in an existing doc?
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried
(although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments
rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of
setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with the
template specs didn't do the job.I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are minor. For
small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a
little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the page.
I think this could also occur due to printer's paper feed abilities. In this case, the error is consistent.
There used to be a problem with multi-column labels but they seem to
have redone the label specification to correct that. When creating
labels, there is "Format" tab that lets you adjust the label properties.
In its new incarnation, it is easy to use and gives you exactly what you
need to adjust the properties of incorrectly specified common label
formats down to 1/100 of an inch.
In the end, I'll probably do this.
You can specify the top margin, label height and vertical pitch (the
last two may be different if there is space between the labels) and do
the same for the left margin, label width and horizontal pitch. They
also allow you to specify the page size and the number of rows and columns.If you think a label isn't defined correctly, fix it. Also, file a bug
report so that the developers can fix it for everyone. It's better to
light a candle or two than to curse the darkness.
In this case, the label spec is correct. Font design will have to have a factor in this someway too, I suspect.
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried
(although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments
rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of
setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with the
template specs didn't do the job.I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are minor. For
small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a
little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the page.I think this could also occur due to printer's paper feed abilities. In this case, the error is consistent.
Are you referring to the page slipping on the rollers? That would likely produce inconsistent results. If the labels are simply off consistently, that would be the top margin. If they vary consistently down that page, that would be vertical pitch.
There used to be a problem with multi-column labels but they seem to
have redone the label specification to correct that. When creating
labels, there is "Format" tab that lets you adjust the label properties.
In its new incarnation, it is easy to use and gives you exactly what you
need to adjust the properties of incorrectly specified common label
formats down to 1/100 of an inch.In the end, I'll probably do this.
You can specify the top margin, label height and vertical pitch (the
last two may be different if there is space between the labels) and do
the same for the left margin, label width and horizontal pitch. They
also allow you to specify the page size and the number of rows and columns.If you think a label isn't defined correctly, fix it. Also, file a bug
report so that the developers can fix it for everyone. It's better to
light a candle or two than to curse the darkness.In this case, the label spec is correct. Font design will have to have a factor in this someway too, I suspect.
It shouldn't unless LO calculates the position of the next label relative to the end of the previous text. It would seem more natural (and simpler) to calculate in absolute terms.
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried
(although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments
rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of
setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with the
template specs didn't do the job.I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are minor. For
small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a
little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the
page.I think this could also occur due to printer's paper feed abilities.
In this case, the error is consistent.Are you referring to the page slipping on the rollers? That would likely
produce inconsistent results. If the labels are simply off consistently,
that would be the top margin. If they vary consistently down that page,
that would be vertical pitch.
Slippage in the rollers is what I was thinking of.
In my case, the error is consistent, so slippage is not problem.
Telling the printer where to actually start the printing appears to be the issue. We'll call it the top margin for convenience, but even that has it's own issues. Since the driver is TWAIN, the brand of printer shouldn't make a difference as long as the printer manufacturer doesn't screw up the driver.
Time to "expand our horizons". (Sounds like a motivational speaker, doesn't it? LOL)
LO's built-in template, displayed on the screen, is correct. The paper's top margin is .5" on the screen and in real life. Positioning of the text is also correct, as displayed on the screen.
Only printing is in error.
Now... Suppose you are creating X number of label designs for someone else. They don't have LO, how to you get the labels to them? Today, I think almost everyone's answer would be PDF.
Fair enough, but that doesn't work either. If you create the PDF with the default template settings, which are correct, the resulting PDF file is also in error. I tried it. Same vertical offset issue.
So you change the top margin, create the PDF, and yep, labels print correctly.
What's wrong with this?
In the above scenario, the recipient of the PDF may/can/will look at the labels before printing them, to see if they are correct. (If they don't, they aren't doing their job.) Guess what? They'll see the top margin error, more easily spotted if you have a vertical ruler option. If you send a PDF based on the correct template (the one supplied by LO), the printing will be off. If you send a PDF based on a modified template, the visual display on the screen will be off.
In this situation, LO falls on its face in providing WYSIWYG... What You See Is What You Get. One of the principals in modern computers. What is displayed on the screen is what is supposed to come out of the printer or other device.
This is no different than if you had the font set for 12 points, but the output to either screen or printer was 16 points. Not a good thing in the long run.
There used to be a problem with multi-column labels but they seem to
have redone the label specification to correct that. When creating
labels, there is "Format" tab that lets you adjust the label properties.
In its new incarnation, it is easy to use and gives you exactly what you
need to adjust the properties of incorrectly specified common label
formats down to 1/100 of an inch.In the end, I'll probably do this.
You can specify the top margin, label height and vertical pitch (the
last two may be different if there is space between the labels) and do
the same for the left margin, label width and horizontal pitch. They
also allow you to specify the page size and the number of rows and
columns.If you think a label isn't defined correctly, fix it. Also, file a bug
report so that the developers can fix it for everyone. It's better to
light a candle or two than to curse the darkness.In this case, the label spec is correct. Font design will have to
have a factor in this someway too, I suspect.It shouldn't unless LO calculates the position of the next label
relative to the end of the previous text. It would seem more natural
(and simpler) to calculate in absolute terms.
Upon retrospect, I agree. But it is something you have to be cognizant of when designing the label, as it can affect the apparent vertical centering of text on the label. Which can effect what you think may be happening with label output. In my case, the label includes a graphic, which is unaffected by text positioning. Makes it easy to figure out where the problem is likely to be.
Another overall negative effect of this problem is, you have to ask yourself, if this is broken, what else in the suite is broken? Especially if you are using LO to make a living. Is there another feature I use in Writer that doesn't work correctly? What if one or two functions in the spreadsheet calculate incorrectly? What if Base occasionally mangles your data?
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they finally admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to the rare occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>
Ken Springer wrote
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they finally admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to the rare occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>
About 25 years ago, I was the treasurer of my children's preschool. I created a spreadsheet to calculate paychecks, and I found that the paycheck was consistently off by .01 (a penny). It drove me nuts. As it turned out, one part of the calculation required the division of 28 by 7, which every third grader knows is 4. Well, my spreadsheet gave an answer of 3.9999999999_. By itself, it wasn't a big problem, but later in the chain of operations, the 3.99999_ produced a result that rounded *down* to the nearest penny instead of *up*, which it would have done if the 28/7 had resulted in 4 instead of 3.9999. I complained to a computer friend of mine who tried to explain that the computer's answer was more "precise" than my mental math of 28/7=4. I didn't buy it.
I learned a valuable lesson in blindly accepting a computer's calculation simply because it was made by a computer.
Virgil
Ken Springer wrote:
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried
(although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments
rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of
setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with the
template specs didn't do the job.I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are minor.
For
small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a
little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the
page.I think this could also occur due to printer's paper feed abilities.
In this case, the error is consistent.Are you referring to the page slipping on the rollers? That would likely
produce inconsistent results. If the labels are simply off consistently,
that would be the top margin. If they vary consistently down that page,
that would be vertical pitch.Slippage in the rollers is what I was thinking of.
In my case, the error is consistent, so slippage is not problem.
Telling the printer where to actually start the printing appears to be
the issue. We'll call it the top margin for convenience, but even that
has it's own issues. Since the driver is TWAIN, the brand of printer
shouldn't make a difference as long as the printer manufacturer doesn't
screw up the driver.Time to "expand our horizons". (Sounds like a motivational speaker,
doesn't it? LOL)LO's built-in template, displayed on the screen, is correct. The
paper's top margin is .5" on the screen and in real life. Positioning
of the text is also correct, as displayed on the screen.Only printing is in error.
Now... Suppose you are creating X number of label designs for someone
else. They don't have LO, how to you get the labels to them? Today, I
think almost everyone's answer would be PDF.
You may already realise, but in case not... Adobe Reader has an option to "Shrink oversized pages" when printing. You might not expect that to do anything when printing an A4 PDF printing onto A4 paper, but it actually shrinks the page slightly to allow for the non-printable margins around the page. To get a 1:1 scale print you have to select "Actual size". It remembers the last setting you use, so you have to remember to check what's it's set to each time.
Fair enough, but that doesn't work either. If you create the PDF with
the default template settings, which are correct, the resulting PDF file
is also in error. I tried it. Same vertical offset issue.
Is the vertical offset incorrect on screen as well as when printed? When I first read that, I thought you meant it was wrong on-screen as well, but from your discussion below it sounds like the PDF is displayed with the correct margin, but prints with the wrong margin?
So you change the top margin, create the PDF, and yep, labels print
correctly.What's wrong with this?
In the above scenario, the recipient of the PDF may/can/will look at the
labels before printing them, to see if they are correct. (If they
don't, they aren't doing their job.) Guess what? They'll see the top
margin error, more easily spotted if you have a vertical ruler option.
If you send a PDF based on the correct template (the one supplied by
LO), the printing will be off. If you send a PDF based on a modified
template, the visual display on the screen will be off.
So if you have a PDF which displays on screen with the correct margin, but when printed it has the wrong margin? To get it to print with the correct margin, you have to produce a PDF which displays with an incorrect margin? Assuming you're printing the PDF at actual size, that would suggest the printer or its driver is in error (unless your PDF reader has the same issue as LibreOffice). Once LibreOffice has created a PDF, it has nothing to do with any difference between how the PDF reader displays and prints it.
If you open a PDF created from a completely different application, does that also print with different margins than when displayed on-screen?
Can you try printing your LibreOffice document and/or PDF on a different printer? Rather than wasting labels, you could of course print on plain paper and hold it up against the labels ;o)
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in
it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they finally
admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to the rare
occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>
How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.
;o)
Mark.
Virgil Arrington wrote:
Ken Springer wrote
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in
it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they
finally admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to
the rare occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>About 25 years ago, I was the treasurer of my children's preschool. I
created a spreadsheet to calculate paychecks, and I found that the
paycheck was consistently off by .01 (a penny). It drove me nuts. As it
turned out, one part of the calculation required the division of 28 by
7, which every third grader knows is 4. Well, my spreadsheet gave an
answer of 3.9999999999_. By itself, it wasn't a big problem, but later
in the chain of operations, the 3.99999_ produced a result that rounded
*down* to the nearest penny instead of *up*, which it would have done if
the 28/7 had resulted in 4 instead of 3.9999. I complained to a computer
friend of mine who tried to explain that the computer's answer was more
"precise" than my mental math of 28/7=4. I didn't buy it.
I wouldn't say 3.9999999... is more precise, but it sounds like your problem is related to the precision of floating-point numbers. 1/7, when represented in binary, is a recurring fraction 0.001001001... (like how 1/3 is 0.3333... in decimal), so cannot be represented precisely in binary with a finite number of bits (just as you can add as many '3's as you like to 0.3333, but it still doesn't exactly represent 1/3).
I don't think there should be a problem with calculating 28/7 = 4 as a single floating point operation, but if the calculation was done (either in the way your formula was expressed or the way the application processed it) as (1/7)*28, that may well give a slightly inaccurate result due to rounding of the (1/7). A bit like calculating 1/3 to 0.333, then multiplying that by 12 to get 3.996 instead of 4. If using a round-down function, and the result was slightly less than 4, it would round down to 3. I guess the solution was to round to the nearest integer.
I learned a valuable lesson in blindly accepting a computer's
calculation simply because it was made by a computer.
Indeed. They do exactly what they're told by a combination of hardware, software and user input - but for various reasons that might not amount to what you thought you were telling it to do.
Mark.
Thanks for the explanation. Oddly enough, it makes some sense, even to my non-techy brain. What I found interesting was that, in the spreadsheet, I got the "wrong" 3.9999, but I wrote a simple BASIC program on my beloved Tandy Model 100 and got the "correct" answer of 4. I was excited to see that my little first generation laptop gave better results than my state of the art (for the time) PC.
Virgil
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried
(although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments
rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of
setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with the
template specs didn't do the job.I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are minor. For
small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a
little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the
page.I think this could also occur due to printer's paper feed abilities.
In this case, the error is consistent.Are you referring to the page slipping on the rollers? That would likely
produce inconsistent results. If the labels are simply off consistently,
that would be the top margin. If they vary consistently down that page,
that would be vertical pitch.Slippage in the rollers is what I was thinking of.
In my case, the error is consistent, so slippage is not problem.
Telling the printer where to actually start the printing appears to be the issue. We'll call it the top margin for convenience, but even that has it's own issues. Since the driver is TWAIN, the brand of printer shouldn't make a difference as long as the printer manufacturer doesn't screw up the driver.
Time to "expand our horizons". (Sounds like a motivational speaker, doesn't it? LOL)
LO's built-in template, displayed on the screen, is correct. The paper's top margin is .5" on the screen and in real life. Positioning of the text is also correct, as displayed on the screen.
Only printing is in error.
Now... Suppose you are creating X number of label designs for someone else. They don't have LO, how to you get the labels to them? Today, I think almost everyone's answer would be PDF.
Fair enough, but that doesn't work either. If you create the PDF with the default template settings, which are correct, the resulting PDF file is also in error. I tried it. Same vertical offset issue.
So you change the top margin, create the PDF, and yep, labels print correctly.
What's wrong with this?
In the above scenario, the recipient of the PDF may/can/will look at the labels before printing them, to see if they are correct. (If they don't, they aren't doing their job.) Guess what? They'll see the top margin error, more easily spotted if you have a vertical ruler option. If you send a PDF based on the correct template (the one supplied by LO), the printing will be off. If you send a PDF based on a modified template, the visual display on the screen will be off.
In this situation, LO falls on its face in providing WYSIWYG... What You See Is What You Get. One of the principals in modern computers. What is displayed on the screen is what is supposed to come out of the printer or other device.
This is no different than if you had the font set for 12 points, but the output to either screen or printer was 16 points. Not a good thing in the long run.
PDF is a great way to exchange documents but it has an interesting print option (usually) of shrinking to fit the printer margins. If you send a PDF label set, you need to remind the recipient to print them full size. I've run into this problem several times where my carefully crafted PDFs aren't printed the way I designed them.
There used to be a problem with multi-column labels but they seem to
have redone the label specification to correct that. When creating
labels, there is "Format" tab that lets you adjust the label properties.
In its new incarnation, it is easy to use and gives you exactly what you
need to adjust the properties of incorrectly specified common label
formats down to 1/100 of an inch.In the end, I'll probably do this.
You can specify the top margin, label height and vertical pitch (the
last two may be different if there is space between the labels) and do
the same for the left margin, label width and horizontal pitch. They
also allow you to specify the page size and the number of rows and
columns.If you think a label isn't defined correctly, fix it. Also, file a bug
report so that the developers can fix it for everyone. It's better to
light a candle or two than to curse the darkness.In this case, the label spec is correct. Font design will have to
have a factor in this someway too, I suspect.It shouldn't unless LO calculates the position of the next label
relative to the end of the previous text. It would seem more natural
(and simpler) to calculate in absolute terms.Upon retrospect, I agree. But it is something you have to be cognizant of when designing the label, as it can affect the apparent vertical centering of text on the label. Which can effect what you think may be happening with label output. In my case, the label includes a graphic, which is unaffected by text positioning. Makes it easy to figure out where the problem is likely to be.
Another overall negative effect of this problem is, you have to ask yourself, if this is broken, what else in the suite is broken? Especially if you are using LO to make a living. Is there another feature I use in Writer that doesn't work correctly? What if one or two functions in the spreadsheet calculate incorrectly? What if Base occasionally mangles your data?
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they finally admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to the rare occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>
I've yet to find software that is perfect (except of course for what I develop 
). Big suites like LO will have the occasional bug but I've never found one that was more than an annoyance.
Ken Springer wrote
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in
it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they
finally admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to
the rare occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>About 25 years ago, I was the treasurer of my children's preschool. I
created a spreadsheet to calculate paychecks, and I found that the
paycheck was consistently off by .01 (a penny). It drove me nuts. As it
turned out, one part of the calculation required the division of 28 by
7, which every third grader knows is 4. Well, my spreadsheet gave an
answer of 3.9999999999_. By itself, it wasn't a big problem, but later
in the chain of operations, the 3.99999_ produced a result that rounded
*down* to the nearest penny instead of *up*, which it would have done if
the 28/7 had resulted in 4 instead of 3.9999. I complained to a computer
friend of mine who tried to explain that the computer's answer was more
"precise" than my mental math of 28/7=4. I didn't buy it.
I wouldn't buy it either. I don't care how someone tries to explain it, the result is wrong. Pure and simple. Just try pulling that response on a grade school teacher, and you're going home with an "F".
How something can be more "precise" than the correct answer is beyond me.
I can see the future now... "Captain Kirk, sorry, we missed the planet by 10 million miles. Our computer divided 28 by 7 and says the answer is 3.999999999..." LOL
Wrong is wrong, I don't care how somebody wishes to justify it.
Ken Springer wrote:
I've never had any luck with any of the Avery templates I've tried
(although my problem has been mostly with left-to-right adjustments
rather than top-to-bottom). I finally just got in the habit of
setting my paragraph position as 1/8" into the label; fooling with the
template specs didn't do the job.I've occasionally found problems with the labels but they are minor.
For
small labels, like return-address labels, the print V. Pitch may be a
little off so the labels creep up or down a little as you go down the
page.I think this could also occur due to printer's paper feed abilities.
In this case, the error is consistent.Are you referring to the page slipping on the rollers? That would likely
produce inconsistent results. If the labels are simply off consistently,
that would be the top margin. If they vary consistently down that page,
that would be vertical pitch.Slippage in the rollers is what I was thinking of.
In my case, the error is consistent, so slippage is not problem.
Telling the printer where to actually start the printing appears to be
the issue. We'll call it the top margin for convenience, but even that
has it's own issues. Since the driver is TWAIN, the brand of printer
shouldn't make a difference as long as the printer manufacturer doesn't
screw up the driver.Time to "expand our horizons". (Sounds like a motivational speaker,
doesn't it? LOL)LO's built-in template, displayed on the screen, is correct. The
paper's top margin is .5" on the screen and in real life. Positioning
of the text is also correct, as displayed on the screen.Only printing is in error.
Now... Suppose you are creating X number of label designs for someone
else. They don't have LO, how to you get the labels to them? Today, I
think almost everyone's answer would be PDF.You may already realise, but in case not... Adobe Reader has an option
to "Shrink oversized pages" when printing.
Every PDF reader I've toyed with has that option for scaling. Useful if you receive something that was created for 11 X 17 paper, and all you have is 8.5 X11. In which case, I would expect a bit of error, not to mention difficulty in reading text that may be on the page.
You might not expect that to
do anything when printing an A4 PDF printing onto A4 paper, but it
actually shrinks the page slightly to allow for the non-printable
margins around the page. To get a 1:1 scale print you have to select
"Actual size". It remembers the last setting you use, so you have to
remember to check what's it's set to each time.
I would submit, that the person who created the PDF, should have considered non-printable margins. Which is why I always use margins that I'm sure all printers can handle, at least to the best of my knowledge.
Fair enough, but that doesn't work either. If you create the PDF with
the default template settings, which are correct, the resulting PDF file
is also in error. I tried it. Same vertical offset issue.Is the vertical offset incorrect on screen as well as when printed? When
I first read that, I thought you meant it was wrong on-screen as well,
but from your discussion below it sounds like the PDF is displayed with
the correct margin, but prints with the wrong margin?
If the onscreen display of the margins for 8167 labels is correct, the printed output is incorrect, from both LO and PDF. If the onscreen margins are incorrect (to the needed amount of course), the printed output is correct, from both LO and PDF.
So you change the top margin, create the PDF, and yep, labels print
correctly.What's wrong with this?
In the above scenario, the recipient of the PDF may/can/will look at the
labels before printing them, to see if they are correct. (If they
don't, they aren't doing their job.) Guess what? They'll see the top
margin error, more easily spotted if you have a vertical ruler option.
If you send a PDF based on the correct template (the one supplied by
LO), the printing will be off. If you send a PDF based on a modified
template, the visual display on the screen will be off.So if you have a PDF which displays on screen with the correct margin,
but when printed it has the wrong margin?
Yep. <G>
To get it to print with the
correct margin, you have to produce a PDF which displays with an
incorrect margin?
Yep.
< Assuming you're printing the PDF at actual size, that
would suggest the printer or its driver is in error (unless your PDF
reader has the same issue as LibreOffice). Once LibreOffice has created
a PDF, it has nothing to do with any difference between how the PDF
reader displays and prints it.
Unless the error is embedded in the PDF.
I hadn't considered the printer driver to be the problem, since the other size label does not exhibit this issue. A .5" margin is a .5" margin.
If you open a PDF created from a completely different application, does
that also print with different margins than when displayed on-screen?
Yep. Just tried Word 2011 on this Mac, same printing error. Margin on the screen is correct, printed margin is not. Which does point to the printer driver as the possible source of the problem.
OT, but I noticed that the 0 point on the vertical ruler in Office is at the top margin, not the top of the paper. Resulting in the ruler saying the letter sized paper being 10.5" long. LOL
Can you try printing your LibreOffice document and/or PDF on a different
printer? Rather than wasting labels, you could of course print on plain
paper and hold it up against the labels ;o)
Wish I could, but my inkjet does not want to feed paper. I suspect the rubber feed roller has hardened on the surface and no longer grabs the paper. I used it so little, it's way down on the priority list to fix.
I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in
it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they finally
admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to the rare
occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.
;o)
LOL!!!!
<snip>
PDF is a great way to exchange documents but it has an interesting print
option (usually) of shrinking to fit the printer margins. If you send a
PDF label set, you need to remind the recipient to print them full size.
I've run into this problem several times where my carefully crafted PDFs
aren't printed the way I designed them.
In this case, IMO, the creator of the PDF should be aware of the potential margin issue and set them accordingly. So far, I've never been burned that I know of by using .5" margins except with the top margin of the 8167 labels.
So there should be no need for shrink to fit unless we are talking a totally different page size.
But it's awful hard to break people's mindset and get them to switch to PDF. "Oh, if we are going to share and work with the same thing, we both have to have MS Word." Or WordPerfect. Or Lotus' word processor in the old days, I can't remember the name. At one time, this was absolutely true. But it's no longer a mandatory thing with PDF on the scene.
There will be situations where where Word, or Excel, or ??? will be required. But it's because that software is already in use across the enterprise. It's not because it's the only software that will do the job.
There used to be a problem with multi-column labels but they seem to
have redone the label specification to correct that. When creating
labels, there is "Format" tab that lets you adjust the label
properties.
In its new incarnation, it is easy to use and gives you exactly
what you
need to adjust the properties of incorrectly specified common label
formats down to 1/100 of an inch.In the end, I'll probably do this.
You can specify the top margin, label height and vertical pitch (the
last two may be different if there is space between the labels) and do
the same for the left margin, label width and horizontal pitch. They
also allow you to specify the page size and the number of rows and
columns.If you think a label isn't defined correctly, fix it. Also, file a bug
report so that the developers can fix it for everyone. It's better to
light a candle or two than to curse the darkness.In this case, the label spec is correct. Font design will have to
have a factor in this someway too, I suspect.It shouldn't unless LO calculates the position of the next label
relative to the end of the previous text. It would seem more natural
(and simpler) to calculate in absolute terms.Upon retrospect, I agree. But it is something you have to be
cognizant of when designing the label, as it can affect the apparent
vertical centering of text on the label. Which can effect what you
think may be happening with label output. In my case, the label
includes a graphic, which is unaffected by text positioning. Makes it
easy to figure out where the problem is likely to be.Another overall negative effect of this problem is, you have to ask
yourself, if this is broken, what else in the suite is broken?
Especially if you are using LO to make a living. Is there another
feature I use in Writer that doesn't work correctly? What if one or
two functions in the spreadsheet calculate incorrectly? What if Base
occasionally mangles your data?I remember years ago when Intel turned out a chip that had an error in
it's math calculations. It was a rare happening, but when they
finally admitted it publicly, trying to say it wasn't important do to
the rare occurrence, it did not go over well at all! <G>I've yet to find software that is perfect (except of course for what I
develop
I've never found one that was more than an annoyance.
It's an annoyance if you can find a workaround. It's a problem if there's no workaround, and it's something you need to get your job done.
And, if it was something I produced, I won't be happy until it's fixed. "Close enough" just doesn't work for me in a lot of cases.