Completely Annotated Rules - work in progress!

[Gantry]

Okay, here's an A5 version…

Complete thumbs up on this one.  All I have to do is print it - no conversion necessary.  I have letter-size in the tray, and it just works.  Using my paper-cutter, the size is a great fit in the original Carc box.

[mjharper]

Okay, here's an A5 version…

Complete thumbs up on this one.  All I have to do is print it - no conversion necessary.  I have letter-size in the tray, and it just works.  Using my paper-cutter, the size is a great fit in the original Carc box.

Are you printing two to a page?

[Gantry]

good god, no

do you mean front + back, or 2 on 1 page (shrunk?)

[mjharper]

good god, no

do you mean front + back, or 2 on 1 page (shrunk?)

Exactly. A5 is half A4—so you should be able to get page 6 and 7 on one side of a sheet of A4 paper with no reduction, no shrinking, and then be able to fold it in half. But on US letter, you'd probably have to shrink it, which is why I was using a custom size. Although it wouldn't fit perfectly for anyone, it wouldn't have to be shrunk either…

Joff was saying earlier that a single page looked fine on A4—but that's scaled up. If it looks fine that way, great, but the new layout isn't actually designed for that. Bear in mind that, in A5 layout, scaled up to A4 or US letter, the current CAR would probably be 125+ pages…

[Joff]

Oh well. Looks like this has me beat. Perhaps it's a limitation in Adobe Reader?

When I try to print Multiple pages per sheet, the leading edge margin is too narrow (The part that goes through the printer first)The printing starts too soon)). The centre margin (where you are supposed to cut an A4 sheet for A5) is too narrow. This means when you fold a piece of A4 in half it encroaches on the text of the following page. The trailing margin is far too wide! I'm confused! 

[Scott]

Printing on letter-size paper, both A4 and A5 have wide enough margins for punching holes (or whatever form of binding someone prefers). The page scaling options I am using are "Fit to Printable Area" and "Booklet Printing". I prefer the slightly wider A5 because it fills the page a little better. All my testing has been single-sided because my printer doesn't support duplexing and I'm too lazy to do it manually. Font size in booklet mode is still large enough to read. The non-scientific "hold two sheets back-to-back and stare at them in front of a light source" method doesn't seem to indicate any problems with duplexing; margins and gutters line up. (Everything is centered on the page by default.)

I'm liking the footnotes on every page. The effort will definitely be worth the end result.

[Joff]

Printing on letter-size paper, both A4 and A5 have wide enough margins for punching holes (or whatever form of binding someone prefers). The page scaling options I am using are "Fit to Printable Area" and "Booklet Printing". I prefer the slightly wider A5 because it fills the page a little better. All my testing has been single-sided because my printer doesn't support duplexing and I'm too lazy to do it manually.

What are you using to print from? Adobe Reader? I ask because I can not find a way to invoke both of those options at the same time!

I too love the footnotes on every page (which is where footnotes should be ) and have no problems in clarity with the text at small size. It is a bonus that it scales up well also.

I have just been thinking though... if I need to have a printer guillotine the sheets to A5 for me after printing, why not have him do it before and just print straight on to A5? Now that should work as my printer will accept A5 sheets! I don't know why I didn't think of it before!

[Joff]

Ok, just tested printing on an A5 piece of paper. No problems

It looks really good 

[mjharper]

I can change the margins, if you want…

[Joff]

I'm not sure if that would help, Matt. It seems that whatever margin space is included, Adobe Reader (ver 8 ) wants to 'force' the 2 pages too close together at the centre margin (unless anyone can demonstrate different). You could try and i'll give you some feedback.

Like I said in my previous post, I can print either at A4 (no change from ver 4) or get some A5 paper and print direct on that. Either way is fine for me, and using A5 paper resolves my issue.

[mjharper]

The problem is, that the whole idea of going A5 was that people could get two pages on a single side of A4. Well, that and it allows footnotes at the bottom.

What the hell. If Adobe can't get their collective brains around the idea that 2xA5=1xA4, it isn't my problem.

If A5 is okay with the Americans, I'll go with that. We can always change the margins later, and look for a decent PDF viewer which doesn't think it knows better than we do (which is precisely what I hate about Word, too—I know what I'm doing, let me do it, you POS!)

Do acronyms count as swearing?

[Scott]

I think I'm understanding the dilemma now. The gutter between columns is roughly equal to the margins, so if someone were to cut the page in half, the text would be closer to one side than the other. This could be alleviated in North America by using Legal size paper (8.5" x 14"), making the cut size 8.5" x 7", which fits inside the Carc box. (Legal size paper fits in all regular printers because it has the same width as Letter size paper.)

I did a quick look to see if metric paper is available in Canada. One of the stores I checked on-line does have A4, but not A5, and it's available via catalogue or online only, not in store. Another store I checked, which usually has better selection, doesn't carry any metric sizes that I could find.

I still think the A5 version is the best way to go.

[Joff]

I think I'm understanding the dilemma now. The gutter between columns is roughly equal to the margins, so if someone were to cut the page in half, the text would be closer to one side than the other.

That's it Scott. Which would mean that hole-punching one of the pages (on A4) would 'eat' the text. As far as I am aware, it doesn't matter the size of the paper you print on in Adobe Reader you will always have the same margin problem when printing 'multiple pages per sheet'. Although using legal size paper will give you a larger margin, you still would have less of a margin on the 'second' page when printing multiple pages.

[Gantry]

I have this pet peeve where I can't stand print on both sides of the paper done in an inkjet, as it shows thru somewhat and just looks ugly (assuming I use normal weight paper). Thus for me I'll be printing 1 page per sheet and using my handy dandy Fiskars paper cutter to cleanly cut the sheets to the right size, then bind them.

[Joff]

I don't like that either. On normal standard 80gms paper an inkjet printer will show through. I tried 100gms paper today while I was testing the new CAR and that is much better. There is no evidence of the ink showing through on that weight paper. Even so, 120gms would be the best.