The DOWN Direction for Continuous Forms Printers

If your data has been formatted in the DOWN print direction for landscape page presentation and is to be printed on wide forms on an continuous forms printer, you must specify LANDSCAPE on the PRESENT subcommand to produce readable output.

If PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN are not specified on the FORMDEF command, the data is printed in the landscape presentation; however, the data will be upside down, as shown in the next Figure. The data is upside down in this case because the media origin for an continuous forms printer is located on the same corner of the form, regardless of whether a narrow or wide form is being used.

The Results of Not Specifying PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN on an Continuous Forms Printer

This figure graphically shows that, if PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN are not specified on an continuous forms printer, the data is printed upside down.

If PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN are specified on the FORMDEF command, the data will be printed as shown in Figure The Results of Specifying PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN on an Continuous Forms Printer. In this example, line data is formatted using a page definition.

PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN can also be specified for data formatted in the DOWN print direction that will be printed on narrow forms. Although PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN do not need to be specified in this case in order to produce readable output, specifying them enables you to use the same form definition regardless of whether the data will be printed on wide forms or narrow forms.

Note: If you are building a form definition that can be used with both wide and narrow forms, remember that the left margin as viewed by the reader becomes the top margin from the printer's perspective (and vice versa). Because many printers have an unprintable area at the margins, you should position the logical page using the OFFSET subcommand in the form definition, so data will not be placed in the unprintable area on either wide or narrow forms.

The Results of Specifying PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN on an Continuous Forms Printer

The Results of Specifying PRESENT LANDSCAPE and DIRECTION DOWN on an Continuous Forms Printer
Parent topic: Specifying Page Presentation on Continuous-Forms Printers