Most applications allow the user to specify or change a document's page dimensions. However, this does not always mean the page size can be physically printed on paper. When you use an application's Page Setup features to select a printer or output device, a connection is made with the printer driver which returns what is known as a "print record". This includes the physical printable area allowed by the device. FLIGHTCHECK® compares the document's page width and length to this printable area and will post an alert if the document cannot be entirely printed (taking into account any scale factor to make the document "fit"). For example, if you create an 8.5" x 11" Letter Size document, you can print the document to a LaserWriter (although there is a small border around the document which physically cannot be printed), but if you select printing in "Landscape" mode (where the length becomes the width) you will not be able to print 11" wide. Therefore, if a document size
is dictated by specific ad specs, then in order to correct such problems you would not want to change the document's page dimensions, but instead you should correct the Page Setup selections which are causing FLIGHTCHECK® to flag the situations.
Paper Width
Some applications provide a feature whereby you can specify the Paper Width to be used for printing. This value will override the print record obtained from the output device driver. In the above problem of printing 11" x 8.5", you could widen the Paper Size value, as the destination output device might be an imagesetter capable of wide printing, but a value lesser than the document's page width will cause a "clip" of the printout to occur. FLIGHTCHECK® will detect this problem and alert you when the specified Paper Width is too short.
When FLIGHTCHECK® detects a problem with printing a specific page size to a certain printable area, it will recommend you verify the page size and if the dimensions are correct you would then want to verify the print scale and paper width settings.