Page Layout ⇒ Margins not as specified?

[Isopropyl]

Hi,

I am using the geometry package to set the margins of my document like this:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[a4paper, left=5cm, right=1.5cm, top=2.5cm, bottom=3cm]{geometry}

I know that these margins do not follow any typographic rules at all - but they are mandatory at my university

Now, the problem is that if I print my document and actually measure the margins with a ruler, I obtain:

left=4.5cm
right=2.3cm
top=2.7cm
bottom=2.8cm

I measure these margins as the distance of the physical edges of the page to the letter of text closest to that edge.

Why are these margins so off the mark? Or am I just measuring them the wrong way?

[localghost]

Add the includeheadfoot option to geometry and see what happens.


Best regards
Thorsten

[Isopropyl]

Hi Thorsten,

thanks for your quick reply. I tried adding this option and what it does is to make the top and bottom margins way larger - as would be expected.

But since I not have a header and the bottom margin is meant to include the footer, specifying this option is probably not going to solve this

[localghost]

Study the geometry manual (Section 6.2 - Body size, p. 9f) thoroughly. There are enough options (nohead, ignorefoot) and other possible settings to get the desired result.

[Isopropyl]

Thank you for the hint However, I am convinced that this has nothing to do with the geometry package per se. If you look closer at the actual margins, it appears that top is too large by roughly the same amount that bottom is too small. Similarly, left is somewhat too small while right is somewhat too big.

It might, therefore, be a problem with the driver settings in the printer that was used (cf. http://www.komascript.de/faqtreibermist). To check this, I printed the same page "typeset" in M$ Word with the same margins specified. It turns out that the physical (deviating) margins are exactly identical in both versions.

So, I guess I will either have to find a way to work around this with the printer or just ignore it...

[localghost]

You can specify a vertical and horizontal offset to balance that. See Section 6.4 (Native dimensions, p. 11f) of the manual. I think you have to tinker a bit but this should be doable.

[Isopropyl]

That might also be a way Thank you very much. I will try that and see if this changes the physical margins in the printout.