HowTo_PrintManual

How to print the KOMA-Script manual reasonably despite the strange layout

First of all, the source files of the German KOMA-Script manual are optimized for the book output. However, the book has a completely different format, a different layout and also uses different fonts. Unfortunately, the book is not yet available in English.

Format and layout of the free KOMA-Script guide, are trimmed for screen display. Nowadays, from netbooks to 80" OLED screens, 16:9 or 16:10 formats are common. The format of the free KOMA-Script manual has therefore been revised accordingly. On my 25" screen now on about half a monitor fits in addition to a quite narrow bookmark column a complete page of the manual. On smaller screens, according to my tests, you can still read half a page of the manual very well when using the entire screen area and continuous display.

Of course, this format is not well suited for printing. You have the choice to print each page of the manual in original size on one A4 page each:

\documentclass[paper=a4,pagesize]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=-,noautoscale=true,fitpaper=false]{scrguide-en.pdf}
\end{document}

or if you want to have two reduced pages side by side across on one A4 page:

\documentclass[paper=277mm:210mm,pagesize]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[a4,landscape,center]{crop}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages={1,3},nup=2x1,fitpaper=false]{scrguide-en.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=4-,nup=2x1,fitpaper=false]{scrguide-en.pdf}
\end{document}

However, paragraph and page breaks as well as the position of floating objects or margin notes have not been optimized for the free guide. This is simply not possible with the available man power.So if you want a nice version and understand German, you should better look for the book, which is also much more comprehensive in content. Part II in particular goes into far more detail in the book. In addition, there is an appendix with a lot of useful additional information and examples.