Printing PDF parts

[AtomicClock]

I feel a little stupid asking this question, which sounds like it's from a quarter-century ago. But I'm having trouble printing PDF parts. Lately, "Adobe Acrobat Reader" (I guess they changed the name again) hasn't been handling oversized pages (like what you might find on IMSLP). The "fit" and "shrink oversized pages" (to US letter) end up cropping the top or bottom (or right edge) of the page.

I'm left to conclude that Acrobat Reader is just too old and crufty. I've been using it for thirty years. Or maybe it's bad printer drivers. HP used to be a good brand, but that reputation is 30 years out of date, too.

What software do y'all use (Windows 10)? Bonus points if I can zoom in a bit, and shrink those oversized margins.

[harrisonreed]

Foxit or LibreOffice.

You can always convert to BMP in Adobe and do a crop in paint to get rid of margins, then print to fit.

You can also work with pdf in Microsoft edge, which may give you what you want if your adobe version is way out of date.

[ghmerrill]

I don't think the Adobe tools are "old and crufty". But I don't use them much. Of course, if you have an old and crufty version/release, then it might be old and crufty. You might check to see if you have the latest update. As Harrison suggests, if your Acrobat Reader is way out or date, there's no telling what's going on.

I typically don't use Acrobat Reader to print anything. I just use my printer. It's actually your printer that does the printing. But in any event, you might check your printer settings -- in particular, things like "Fit to printable area" vs. "Fit to paper" vs. "Custom", which are usually listed under a "Scale" area of the setting when you print a document. If one of these got set to a different default, that could explain the change in the behavior you're seeing. Or if your version of Acrobat Reader isn't passing on that direction to the printer, then ...

These things are frustrating, I know. Best of luck.

Aside: I tend to avoid a lot of issues with Acrobat by using PDFElement as my PDF handler/editor/etc. It's basically a low cost one-time purchase fee. Alas, they have yet to port it to the Chromebook, but I can still use it on Windows if I have to.

[AtomicClock]

I'm not really interested in those expensive PDF authoring tools. That's not the business I'm in. But I think I found a few things that work.

In Acrobat's print dialog:

• set the scaling to actual size (so the preview image shows that only the upper-left part of the page will be printed.) Don't use fit, shrink oversized pages, or specify a scaling percent.
• I set the Orientation to auto (so the preview image shifts from upper-left to center. Don't use portrait or landscape.
  Leave Page Setup on portrait

In the printer properties:

• allow scale-to-fit
• specify portrait

With these somewhat contradictory (and inconvenient) settings, I'm getting useful printouts, though still with the publisher's ample margins.

I also played around with pdf2go.com, which can shrink pdf pages down to US letter. I just don't like relying on some rando website. I started playing around with the pdfjam wrapper around LaTeX, but it's surprisingly hard to transfer files from my Linux VM back to my windows machine.

I just use my printer.

I'm not sure I understand this. How do you use a printer without a program? I tried dragging a pdf file from explorer into the print queue, but it clearly launched acrobat reader for an instant and used it as a conduit. Maybe things would be different if I had a postscript printer (pdf being a subset of ps)? This one uses PCL. (I know because I got PCL error messages when trying Harrison's LibreOffice suggestion.) I remember "copy"ing files to printers back in the DOS days, but that was only for plain text (and probably postscript, for fancy people).

Aside: I tend to avoid a lot of issues with Acrobat by using PDFElement as my PDF handler/editor/etc. It's basically a low cost one-time purchase fee. Alas, they have yet to port it to the Chromebook, but I can still use it on Windows if I have to.

According to their webpage, It's $80/year. Hardly one-time.

Anyway, I guess I'm happy enough now.

[ghmerrill]

According to their webpage, It's $80/year. Hardly one-time.

I guess you missed the One-time fee "Perpetual Plan" for $129 (or $139.99 for the Cross-platform license). I think I paid something like $69 some years ago and am still using it on my Windows system. I tried it on my Chromebook with my old license key, but they told me it probably wouldn't work well because of ChromeOS/Android differences. It sort of worked, but not well enough to support the kind of use I sometimes require.

I'd upgrade to the new Perpetual Plan, but am waiting until they deploy a version to the Chromebook -- which I hope they do, although they're pretty focused on Windows and Mac. I've always found the product to be very dependable and easy to use, and have found the people to be very responsive to any support or licensing questions.

[harrisonreed]

So is your printer the actual problem?

[AtomicClock]

I still think Acrobat Reader is buggy.

[SimmonsTrombone]

I use Photoshop which allows me to size the PDF, cut out the wide margins, and also to clean up bad copies by setting the black and white levels. GIMP is supposed to be able to edit pdfs in the same manner, though I haven't tried it.

[ithinknot]

If you want multipage pdf cropping without format conversion: https://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/

[Matt K]

On Windows machines, I probably would be using Sumatra: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader .Or dependin gon how I'm opening the PDFs, possibly Firefox.

That said, if you're running into problems printing, I would look to either the WIndows 10 print interface or the printer interface. It depends on what you're doing. But the Windows 10 dialogue has definitely changed over the years and HP has been known to make changes to drivers and may have recently made a change. The gold standard for a long time, at least for home printing, is Brother. In fact, I have a Brother printer from 2008 that is sitting next to my desk at this very moment and it's still working as good as it did when it was new.

[ghmerrill]

I'm not sure I'd go with Brother as the gold standard, but it is definitely very good, and at this point in time HP has become a frustrating pain in the butt. Our own gold standard has been Canon. But (for reasons that are not entirely clear) a couple of years ago we replaced our great Canon with an HP. [The Canon needed its ink pad cleaned, it was during the COVID years, and my wife didn't want me to do the work on the printer. I think the fix would have been trivial, but ...]

Every couple of weeks I think "I've got to get rid of this printer." Their whole new approach with the Print Service and the hilariously misnamed "HP Smart" seems cumbersome and painful. Plus this printer doesn't directly support ChromeOS -- which is currently my primary platform. To scan from this Chromebook I'm on I have to use the "HP Office jet Pro 8020 series Embedded Web Server" HP isn't what it used to be. On the other hand, getting a printer for your specific needs has become a bit tricky in the ever-shifting world of devices and interfaces. But the next time around I'll probably go again with Canon -- or Brother.

[baileyman]

I've bought two oversized printers through the years just to make sure I can print parts on proper 9x12 drawing paper.

[AtomicClock]

Every couple of weeks I think "I've got to get rid of this printer."

I've been debating the need for printer ownership at all. With (ethical?) printing at work, or for a small fee at the library or various stores, there might not be a huge need to own one. Even after returning to the trombone, I still print less than monthly.

[ghmerrill]

My printing needs have shifted, and for the last several years the primary demand has been for printing sheet music. Prior to that it was more publication oriented -- but even then, with virtually all journals going online (perhaps in addition to print versions), everything was being done electronically. I can't remember the last time I published anything that required any paper form of copy. Now that I think of it, I think the last time I produced paper copy for submission or editorial change was some time in the early 90s? Maybe earlier than that. Yikes.

However, printing may not be the major role for a printer any longer. I don't do nearly as much printing as scanning, and it's been that way for some time. My wife still uses the printer for printing materials for teaching English to non-English-speaking immigrants -- since many of them lack either the hardware resources, knowledge/skills, or financial ability to go digital.