HowTo_TestPage

How to check page settings such as the widths of margins, the size of the type area, or the position of the header, address, etc., and ensure that they are correct if necessary

If one or more dimensions seem to be wrong on the screen, the first thing to do is to make a printout. On the screen there are too many factors that can be deceptive.

If on the printout one dimension or several are not correct, it is most likely due to the printer driver or the print settings. For example, some drivers tend to basically set paper in 'letter' format. This can then quickly lead to strange shifts when printing an A4 document. Therefore: Check paper format settings!

Sometimes, however, the paper format of the generated document is already wrong. This is because the original TeX output format DVI does not know any information about paper formats at all. This information must reach the DVI driver in another way. KOMA-Script offers the pagesize option for this purpose, whose default pagesize=auto provides the desired result in most cases. Nevertheless: Read option pagesize in the KOMA Script manual!

Some printer drivers or even AcroReader/AdobeReader have options to adjust the size of a document to the paper size. The drivers also assume that an existing A4 document must be reduced in size when printing on A4 paper, so that the unprintable margins of the printer do not mean that part of the document cannot be printed. This reduction in size will then, of course, cause all of the dimensions to be incorrect. Therefore: Disable page adjustment options in the print dialog of the program you are using and in the printer settings of the driver!

LaTeX provides a document that can be used to print a test page to check the printer settings. This document is called testpage.tex. It is interactive. This means that settings are queried during the TeX run. Since some users seem to have problems to use the document, there is a corresponding PDF for A4 paper and an additional PDF for letter paper attached. Be sure to print a LaTeX test page and use it to check the printer settings!

If the user is still of the opinion that the printout is faulty in its dimensions because of an error in KOMA-Script, it should be pointed out that in case of a bugreport it is absolutely necessary to additionally describe on which way with which programs and which settings a printout was finally generated from the TeX file. If possible, the printing document itself, usually a PDF, PS or DVI file, should also be provided somewhere.

If the cause is not KOMA-Script, you should not tinker with the document to fix faulty drivers or driver settings. This would only lead to incompatible documents. The correct solution can only be: Remove the cause of the problem!