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For most reports generated by most application packages, the precise position of printing on the page—whether paper or virtual paper—is not critical. The typical report of 80 or 132 columns by 66 or so lines prints fine through PDFX and no special adjustments for paper or margin are necessary.

However, things change in the case of "precision printed" reports, where you are—for example—printing onto an overlay document that has boxes to be checked and specific positions where data must be placed. Having the document printed in approximately the right place is not good enough; you need precise placement of all of your printing.

You will presumably use A-Shell's GDI print directives or equivalent to properly position text and images on your page. And you will also presumably use very precise measurements for placing elements on the page, beginning with print position 0,0.

In PDFX, then, it's obviously important that you precisely define your margins. Because PDFX's paper parameters "fit" and "center" default to YES/TRUE/ON, you need to turn them off so they do not affect printing placement. Once they are off, then you also want to tell PDFX the position on the page where you want to start printing—or at least measuring—which presumably is position 0,0. To accomplish both these tasks, it is recommended that you include the following block at the beginning of each "precision printed" report.

//PDFX,Paper.Center,false

//PDFX,Paper.Fit,false

//PDFX,Paper.LeftPos,0

//PDFX,Paper.TopPos,0

 

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