I have a song for voice and piano that involves 2 pages of music and want the music on two 8.5" x 11" pages side-by-side on one side of a piece of tabloid 11" x 17" paper (to form pages 2 & 3 of a “booklet”). The opposite side of the tabloid paper should be printed with pages 1 and 4, both of which contain text. In Setup mode I set the page size for the project to letter (8.5" x 11") because this is the format size of the individual pages. In Print mode I set the paper size to 11" x 17" (booklet) to provide for a folding booklet. My printer works fine with tabloid paper on other programs but the print results on this project give me huge text that is not formatted to either the letter or tabloid-sized page. Is there something I should be doing differently?
Did you set the JOB TYPE to booklet…?
Yes, the job is set to booklet.
Programs often seem to mess up the booklet printing – Adobe Reader seems to get it right, though, so I print normally to a PDF file, then open Reader and use it’s booklet printing capability. Works every time.
Thanks but I tried that, too, exporting a pdf to both Adobe Acrobat Reader and Apple’s Preview app. The problem is somewhat improved in that the printout is at least formatted to fit tabloid-size paper but the margins are wrong and effectively push the music and text away from the center of the page, quite unlike the formatting in the Dorico document.
You should find, Mike, that simply choosing ‘Booklet’ under Job Type and choosing 11" x 17" paper under Page Setup is sufficient. I print booklets from Dorico often (in fact I have just this morning printed 24 booklets on A3 paper for a service my choir will be leading tomorrow) and it works perfectly every time.
In my experience some ink-jet printers introduce some margins of their own when printing A3 duplex automatically, which can result in the issue Mike 999 is experiencing. Although I don’t know what printer is involved here, I had problems printing an A4 booklet (A3 paper) on the inkjet here at home just now, whereas the same file produced an A5 booklet (A4 paper) without problems on the same printer…
I am still having no luck. Daniel, are you referring to “Page Setup” in print mode or to the “Page Setup” category in Layout Options? In Layout Options, I started by selecting 8.5 x 11 (US Letter, portrait) “Page Size” as I want individual pages to be 8.5" x 11" in portrait orientation. Then, in Print Mode I chose a booklet job type and 11 x 17 paper size (landscape) in the right hand panel in order to get two pages on each side of the paper. Are these the correct settings? In any event, I also tried setting both “Page Setups” to 11" x 17" and that didn’t work for me either.
Fratveno, the printer I am having problems with is a Canon PRO-100 series color laser printer that my wife uses successfully for artwork. This is my first project with that printer as I usually rely on a more compact black and white model that is limited to maximum 9" wide paper.
Does it print correctly if you select the output paper size 8.5 x 11 (landscape) ?
You shouldn’t need to set anything in the macOS Page Setup dialog: everything you need to change is on the right-hand side in Print mode. Make sure that you choose 11" x 17" paper under Page Setup, and choose ‘Booklet’ under Job Type. This should automatically choose the appropriate landscape page orientation in Page Setup, but you can check it there to make sure. Finally, under Duplex Printing, set the duplex options as appropriate: I would guess your printer has a duplexer, in which case you can choose ‘Both sides automatically’. Now you should see in the print preview you should see two pages: the first should show page 4 on the left and page 1 on the right, and the second should show page 2 on the left and page 3 on the right. Click the Print button at the bottom right-hand corner of the panel (not the one on the left of the window in the OS Dialogs section) to initiate the print.
If you read this post earlier, I’ve changed it, since the forum wouldn’t let me delete it.
I believe I’ve found a buglet. If, in the Print Mode, the destination is set to Printer, then the Paper Size button under Page Setup works fine. However, if the destination is set to Graphics, that button’s “dead” — unresponsive to the mouse.
So the only way I can export pdf files ready to print duplex on tabloid paper is to set the paper size under destination Printer, then change the destination to Graphics. (I use a Mac, btw.)
This may not be exactly on point to this thread, but I don’t think it’s completely off track, either.
Having said all that, I’m completely thrilled to find that Dorico both prints and sends to pdf in booklet mode perfectly, right out of the application. I’ve spent years saving to pdf as letter files, then using a third party application to turn those into tabloid booklet files. And on a large ensemble arrangement, this is a significant time-saver.
New edit: OK, it’s not working after all. Even when the Paper Size reads Tabloid, when I actually send them to Graphics (pdf) and open the files, they have artificially wide top and bottom margins, as if they’re on letter paper. (The left and right margins are ok, btw.)
Any ideas/answers?
I’m afraid it’s by design, Lew, that at present graphics are always exported at the document’s page size as specified in Layout Options, and not at the paper size chosen for your current printer. We will definitely consider whether or not we can change this in future.
A related question — is there a way to specify custom paper sizes in Print Mode? I lay out my scores at 9"x12" (Concert) size, but that doesn’t seem to be an option in the Page Setup section of Print Mode.
Not at the moment, I’m afraid, Julian. In theory it will appear in the list on the right-hand side if it is a paper size that your printer claims to support and it’s a paper size that the people who build Qt think warrants inclusion, which I suspect does not include this size. If you set it up as a custom size in your printer’s OS dialog, then you can access it using the OS dialog at the bottom left-hand corner of Print mode instead.
Got it — I hope there will be a way to do this in the future — I figure there must be a lot of people printing Concert size.
Have you figured out any way to export PDFs at the right size? Right now, as far as I can tell, PDFs simply export at whatever paper size is selected in Print Mode.
Thanks!
Using the options on the right-hand side in Print mode, PDFs should always export at the size chosen on the Page Setup page of Layout Options, i.e. their “actual” size.
That appears to work fine for the Normal job type. However, for the Booklet job type, both the printing and the pdf exporting condense the right and left margins as if they’re on some other size paper.
In both cases, you can see it on the screen before it ever goes out to print or pdf; the left/right margins are too wide.
As always, pls let me know if I’m doing something wrong.
Unless I’m doing something wrong, that doesn’t seem to work for me, even in Normal (not Booklet) mode. The Graphics section seems to inherit the Page Setup from the Printer section — so whatever paper size is selected in the Printer section, the Graphics section shows that paper size in a greyed-out menu. If the paper size is smaller than the project’s page size, everything gets cropped.