Tutorial on charting

Family History Charting

PRINTERS AND PRINTER SETUP ISSUES

Default Printer Properties
Some software only operates correctly if the current Windows Default Printer is set up exactly the way you wish to use that printer when printing that chart. When using custom page sizes in a wide format printer this can cost a lot of user time. This can mean entering your software, generating the chart with known settings and discovering the dimensions of the output, then exiting the software to set the Default Printer Properties to match these requirements and then again go through the chart generation process.This is certainly not very convenient if you use your computer with other applications.

Setting the Page Size and Orientation
It is often difficult to determine the page size, orientation and scaling that will be best to print the chart. Sometimes the printer properties dialog in charting software is not well written. This occasionally leads to values set at one level not being recognized as having been modified at another level. In the extreme, some software can get into indefinite loops when legal values (for the particular printer) are set but these are outside of the expectations of the charting software. Care must be taken when setting printer properties that all places where they may be set all show the same set of values!