printing and font problems
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg6180] printing and font problems
- From: bhunt at brians.umd.edu (Brian R. Hunt)
- Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 02:52:41 -0500
- Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
My colleagues and I have encountered several problems with printing and fonts in using the Unix and Windows versions of 3.0. We are interested to know in each case if these are known bugs, problems with our installation of the program, problems with our use of the program, or what-have-you, and if there is anything we can to to fix or work around the problem. I cannot find anything relevant in the FAQs at http://www.wri.com/support/. 1) [Windows? and Unix] On our Unix systems and on 1 of the 2 PCs I work with, input cells do not print in boldface; they look identical to output cells. More precisely, we get plain Courier rather than bold Courier on the printed page, whatever type of cell we use bold Courier in. The PCs on which I work are more or less identical, but the one for which I am able to get bold Courier is attached to an HP LaserJet 4MV while the one for which I am not able to get bold Courier is attached to an HP DeskJet 855C, so perhaps that is the deciding factor. On our Unix systems we print to a PostScript file and are definitely not getting bold Courier, regardless of the printer. Courier is not the only font so afflicted, but it seems to be the most important one. 2) [Windows and Unix] It seems that the type of font selected for input and output cells in the style sheet for a notebook is irrelevant with the default settings--they show up as Courier on the screen and on the printed page unless we go through and change the font by hand in each cell. This is problematic for us mainly in conjunction with item (1) above--we have nothing against Courier if we can make it print properly. We observe that the style sheet font is used automatically if we set DefaultInputFormatType to TraditionalForm, but this has other side effects that seem undesirable to us. 3) [Unix only] For some notebooks, when we print from the Unix version lines in input and text cells are not wrapped correctly, resulting in text running off the right margin of the page. We find that we can correct this problem by changing PageWidth from WindowWidth to PaperWidth in the Option Inspector, but on the other hand this is not necessary for all of our notebooks so it seems that the root of the problem is elsewhere. 4) [Unix only?] For some notebooks, page numbers are not printed after a certain point in the notebook. Subsequent attempts to print the same notebook result in no page numbers at all, unless we quit and restart Mathematica. This happens in the Unix version but I have not confirmed whether or not it happens in the Windows version. 5) [Windows only] If I open and close the Format|Choose Font... dialog box, then any subsequent attempts to print a notebook hang the program, whether or not I actually changed anything in the dialog box. This happens on both PCs I work with. 6) [Windows and Unix?] Certain standard type sizes seem to be unavailable in certain contexts. For instance, on the PC I am currently working with, I cannot get 12-point Courier on the printed page; 10-point Courier is substituted. On the screen, I cannot get 14-point Courier; 12-point Courier is substituted. The substitution is done silently; the only way I can tell it has happened is by visual comparison. -- Brian R. Hunt bhunt at ipst.umd.edu