Hello All,
I’ve a simple outline that I’d like to print as A4 paper ,is there a way to align the printing settings / output settings in such a way that
I’ve attached the current output .
Outlin for Form.tbx (83.8 KB)
I think this is possible:
How I did this:
In Tinderbox, File ▸ Page Setup, I set the page size to A4 (maybe default depending on your locale) and the paper orientation to Landscape like so:
The use File ▸ Print and on the Print pane open the PDF menu (bottom left) and click open in Preview:
From the pop-up menu select ‘Open in Preview’ and you get a ‘preview’ in Preview like so:
I then deleted the blank extra page (‘content coming from Tinderbox and not configurable’), which throws this warning. Don’t worry, no harm done.
Select Print and Preview offers more control than the print dialog in Tinderbox (not sure why - same printer selected in both cases).
My printer’s not playing at present but printing to PDF rather than physical paper at this stage gives an OK output.
OR:-
Edit menu ▸ Copy View As Image. Switch to Preview, File ▸ New from Clipboard. Then print. Or, better IMO, if you save the file as a PDF you have vector information which scales nicely plus you can still print it.
OR:-
Untested but my hunch is AppleScript might be a route to go, if you will do this regularly and don’t want to be fiddling with set-up all the time. In the same manner a tool like Keyboard Maestro could be used but the latter might end up actually altering setting where as AppleScript might be able to do this without permanently changing any current settings.
Every day a school day - I didn’t know the answer until I tested all this just now.
HTH 
HI Mark,
Thank you again for a wonderful reply. I really really appreciate you taking time to attach screenshot and send a reply . It makes it much MUCH easier to follow what you’ve done.
This method of working in PDF and then opening the PDF is working for smaller outlines, but the moment you’ve bigger outline , this method doesn’t work NOT working for slightly longer outlines.
See below an example of file Roated as Landscape in TB, opened as PDF , then printed as PDF again and rotated.
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Copying as Image and pasting in Preview seems to work but it posts the entire thing in 1 page as a GIANT PDF which I don’t know how to split as A4 Printout as .
I think that shades into a feature request. You are wanting to print the (whole of) the current view with a high degree of fidelity but, magically (i.e. via app not user effort), paginate in a way where nothing is lost.
Outline, by its nature implies outline with check-boxes & columns even if we don’t happen to use those feature. Forget height/length for as moment, what does the app do if the view is too wide for the paper, regardless of orientation.
IOW, to the human eye, it is easy to see/say the output is ‘wrong’. Harder is to indicate what is ‘right’, especially without costly engineering if a richer view-to-print export method.
I’m not obliquely suggesting the desire to ‘just’ export the view is wrong, but from my limited experimentation thus far, communicating my intent to the app is harder than imagined. Why that should be is outside my immediate expertise.
I believe that if you do a Page Setup first to set the page size, then printing the outline will in fact paginate for A4.
Hi @eastgate,
Thanks for the reply. I did set the page setup first and upon printing the output is the same. Is there anything else I can try?
@mwra , thanks for your detailed answer. Before you answered, I did expect to print this magically
Hmm. This would suggest that a view, when printed, is passing what is effectively an image to the print system. The image in the last screen grab does not match the discussed reference file, which is one likely cause of the differing input. My notes were based on the shared file, whilst the nature of the printed ‘data’ is hidden from us users.
Thus my hunch is your starting assumption and which I’m not disparaging) is that the view print process works like a word-processor so ‘knows’ how to scale/paginate. There is an evident mismatch here that is not user-fixable today.
I’d suggest emailing support with a feature request explaining what you expect (in terms of page breaks, content scaling/wrapping). The latter can open a channel for discussion of the cost/practicality of achieving the presumed outcome. I suspect printing an outline (which inherently implies checkboxes and columns too, even if only some use them) is actually quite complex. Thus, there is no simple baseline assumption—beyond the print-out looking ‘right’. But that is like telling the decorator to keep painting the room (at fixed cost) until the shade looks right, rather than agreeing on a shade before-hand and accepting that a whole wall of the dried colour might not look like the showroom swatch.
There is no binary right/wrong here, but rather the need to surface assumptions in an aspect of the app (printing of views) that, to date, has not proved problematic.
Sorry there is no simple fix at the moment—or, at least, one of which I’m aware.
I was remembering a different version, which did know how to paginate.
For now: copy from outline to Pages or Word, and print from there.
