Subj : Re: How much should I charge for fixed-price software contract? To : comp.programming From : Chris Sonnack Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 03:13 pm blmblm@myrealbox.com writes: >> IME, if the printer is bitmapped at all, you get pretty good results. >> If you send a nicely formatted Word or PDF doc to a text line printer, >> then not so much. > > Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. The kinds of differences I was thinking > of were more like "in this version, printed on machine 1, page 1 has > 60 lines, but in this version, printed on machine 2, page 1 has 62 > lines." I'm fairly sure I've seen an example of this, but my memory > may be faulty (meaning "I may be thinking of how OpenOffice seems to > print MS Word files with different page breaks from Genuine MS Word"). > You seem to be talking about more subtle differences in appearance. > (I don't know how to say that better; it may still not be clear.) Ah, I follow now. When I do Word docs, I either put in hard page breaks where pages should go, or structure the formatting so that it doesn't matter. (Also, in Word, you can set styles to eliminate truly ugly page breaks--"widowed" lines and such.) Where page breaks are important, I try to structure the page so there's a little room for error in case a printer has hard margins that are larger than expected. > As far as I know, you don't get this sort of thing with PDF, though > there might be problems with missing fonts (which, again AFAIK, can > be avoided by embedding fonts). Agreed. I rarely send Word documents--MS put too much power in what should be a simple document. ;-\ (Don't get me wrong--I love Word's power and write in it a lot. I just don't prefer it as an exchange medium.) >>> The variation's probably less than with HTML, but is it really zero? >> >> No, but hugely different. HTML is a total crapshoot in that regard. >> PDF and Word at least give you fighting chance of accurate repro (and >> given any "modern" printer, your chances are quite good, I think). > > Agreed. I still think MS Word is iffier than PDF, but maybe it's > not a big difference. I'm certain Word is iffier than PDF! NO doubt in my mind!! -- |_ CJSonnack _____________| How's my programming? | |_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL | |_____________________________________________|_______________________| .