Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

Making the Printout

The experience of printing depends on the printer you're using—laser printer, inkjet, or whatever. In every case, however, all the printing options hide behind two commands: File→Page Setup, which you need to adjust only occasionally, and File→Print, which you generally use every time you print. You'll find these two commands in almost every Macintosh program.

Page Setup

The Page Setup dialog box lets you specify some key characteristics about the document you're going to print: orientation, paper dimensions, and so on (see Figure 14-2).

Figure 14-2. Here in Page Setup are the controls you need to print a document rotated sideways on the page, so that it prints "the long way." The Scale control, which lets you reduce or enlarge your document, can be handy if the program you're using doesn't offer such a control. And the Paper Size pop-up menu, of course, specifies the size of the paper you're printing on—US Letter, US Legal, envelopes, or one of the standard European or Japanese paper sizes (A4 and B5).

The options here vary by program and printer. The Page Setup options for an Epson inkjet, for example, differ dramatically from those for a laser printer. Only your printer's user manual can tell you exactly what these choices do.

Tip

You must configure the Page Setup settings independently in each program you use. And by the way, to change the default paper size for ...