Page Layout ⇒ Text page spills off bottom of paper

[rplantz]

I'm using Ubuntu (10.04) texlive. I use the geometry package for a smaller print page size on letter (8.5 X 11) physical paper for a book. With the move to texlive 2009 Ubuntu changed the default paper size from letter to a4. So I have to use the "-t letter" option to dvips.

With this option I find that

Code: Select all

\usepackage[paperwidth=7.44in,paperheight=11.0in,
        textwidth=6.0in,marginparwidth=1.0in,
          top=1.0in,bottom=1.0in,centering]{geometry}

gives a printed page that is narrower than and centered on the physical page, just as one would expect.

However,

Code: Select all

\usepackage[paperwidth=7.44in,paperheight=9.68in,
        textwidth=6.0in,marginparwidth=1.0in,
          top=1.0in,bottom=1.0in,centering]{geometry}

causes the printed page to still be centered right to left, but not from top to bottom. It is about 2 inches from the top of the paper, and then the bottom of the printed page spills off the bottom of the paper.

Can I expect that removing the Ubuntu texlive and doing my own installation will fix this problem?

[frabjous]

If the page size of the document is smaller than the paper you're printing it on, wouldn't it in fact be up to the software that's doing the printing (and maybe even the printer driver/printer's firmware) to figure out what to do with the extra space?

I seem to recall, for example, that evince and Adobe Reader do different things with it.

What are you using to print?

And why not just use the letterpaper option for the geometry package and adjust the margins accordingly?

I personally don't know of any reason to think this has anything to do with the Ubuntu (really, Debian) packages for TL2009 in particular. Any default settings would be overridden by the options passed to the document class and/or geometry anyway.

[rplantz]

If the page size of the document is smaller than the paper you're printing it on, wouldn't it in fact be up to the software that's doing the printing (and maybe even the printer driver/printer's firmware) to figure out what to do with the extra space?

I seem to recall, for example, that evince and Adobe Reader do different things with it.

What are you using to print?

And why not just use the letterpaper option for the geometry package and adjust the margins accordingly?

Thank you for your very quick response.

I'm using the crop package to give "camera" marks on the page. I assume that the printer will need these for proper page alignment. It works fine with Ubuntu's older versions, which use texlive 2007. (I have this on another disk, just in case.)

I'm using evince to display the page. When I printed it on paper I got the same results.