Hm, that’s a pity. Maybe there is on the background a macOS setting that is confusing Dorico. But that will not solve the problem I’m afraid.
Not on my machines.
Having had a quick search through the forum, my observation is that the only people that report this problem - and have been reporting this problem since Dorico 1 - are the people using German language operating systems.
By the looks of things, everywhere else the operating system (I’m not sure whether it’s exclusively macOS) calls A4 just A4. There is no “DIN”.
My guess is that Dorico is expecting the operating system to report A4 or Letter as the default paper size within the printer driver (or possibly just the macOS default paper size across all printers) and as it’s not finding A4 it’s defaulting to Letter.
I don’t know what can be done to solve the problem, but thought I’d post the likely cause of the problem.
In fact, the problem is reproducible, at least on my Macbook Pro (running Ventura). Change this setting:
You’ll likely find that the next time you launch Dorico, it will completely cobble up the paper sizes in Print mode. My experience here is that for printers that can cope with larger sizes, it’ll default to A3, and for printers that can’t deal with larger sizes it’ll default to Letter rather than A4, even if the Default Paper Size setting within Dorico Preferences is set to International.
edit: It seems odd to me that it’s actually changing the macOS language to German that changes the names of the page sizes within the OS, but changing the language to German isn’t a requirement for reproducing this issue.
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Hats off to Leo for not only “venturing down the rabbit hole” but even figuring out which hole may yield a solution!!
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I think there must be something a bit more to it than just changing the region/language setting to Germany/German. I did so, and on my own system, I still find that A4 is chosen as expected in Print mode for a project that uses A4 page size. I guess perhaps there’s an additional ingredient with the printer itself that must be a factor.
Dorico’s view of the printer and its capabilities is abstracted away to some degree by the Qt framework. It doesn’t, for example, list the page size names that the printer driver defines, but rather it lists the names of Qt’s own page sizes, which it maps onto the page sizes that the printer reports that it supports. I haven’t checked Qt’s own localisation, but I suspect that Qt doesn’t make any distinction between A4 and DIN A4, which seems fair enough given that they are (to my knowledge) identical.
What page sizes appear in the drop-down in the Page Setup section of the options panel on the right-hand side in Print mode? Does A4 appear there, but it simply isn’t chosen by default?
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Here’s a rather dull <4 minute video detailing what I see.
The list of page sizes in Print mode, with Region set to Germany (or indeed United Kingdom), and with Language set to English, is as follows:
The list of page sizes in Print mode with macOS Language set to German is as follows:
(I think these lists are both for AbbeyRoad Adrian)
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Very useful, indeed.
Thank you pianoleo.
A hint for a solution of this quirk could be: after having opened a project, having then switched to Print Mode and changed the page size from Letter to DINA4 and set Custom Scale to 100%; this setting will actually stick. If I save, close and reopen that project, it will show the right page size of DINA4.
For interest, I checked, as I was curious about DINA4. A4 is the ISO 216 standard and the size is identical to DINA4. A4 is the ISO standard used globally (except you know where 
), but ISO 216 was based directly on the German DIN 476 standard.
[This does not solve the problem but it is good to know.]
Most ISO standards are adopted, rather than created anew. Countries’ national standards agencies (and companies, e.g. Adobe for PDF ) can submit their work.
It’s easier to borrow someone else’s work than start from scratch!
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Most were the result of years of bitter ‘negotiation’ (back room deals, quid pro quos, arm twisting) between national standards organisations, each desperately trying to protect their local industries and practices.
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The old computing joke: the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. ISO, DIN, JIS, Imperial, all for paper…
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I have absolutely no idea how the QT framework works. So this suggestion might be completely worthless:
If the developers in the Dorico-Preferences could somehow “hard”-link Default Paper Size Type “International” to A4 and “North American” to Letter the problem might be gone. The option “Automatic” could still exist next to the two.
Hi Leo.
I’ve tried the same thing you’ve done. I only have one printer set on my computer. My location was set to World (a location I could not re-establish after that change), changed it to Germany, and it did not change anything for me (just like for Daniel…) so I don’t know if it helps or not…
I don’t have that impressive list of printers, but the problem is the same for me – on a german Mac
Most of the time I export as PDF rather than print. So I open the print module and just change from “Printer” to “Graphics”. Then I realize that Page Setup shows US letter which I can’t change. I then have go back to “Printer”, change the format to A4, then go back to “Graphics” and then export the PDF.
So 2 problems:
a) “US letter” as default (as discussed above)
b) not be able to change paper format in Graphics mode
If you’re exporting to PDF, don’t waste time changing the page size in print mode - just ignore it. Regardless of the incorrect print preview the exported PDFs will match the page size in Layout Options.
(This is why the page size is greyed out in Graphics Export mode - it’s irrelevant for Export purposes.)
The greyed out “Letter” indication is a poor view for people who like perfection. There are quite a few “perfectionist” users of Dorico, and you’ll find them among the affected German users too
You are definitely not alone. This is already driving me nuts after a few weeks as a new Dorico user. Same configuration: Mac OS. Project DIN A4 but I have to tell each time before printing that it will be on DIN A4 and not US Letter. Surely this can be sorted out in Dorico Pro Version 5?!
Thanks to any listening ears @Steinberg!
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