Hi.

At work, I use a network printer. Can't recall it's brand nor model right now, it's a big thing that supporrt both document scanning and A3 print.

Anyway - the problem here is that the margins of the pysical printout doesn't match the margins of the svg document.

I did a test, I draw four squares one by one cm each, and placed them (aligned) in each corner of the svg document (see attachment). What I expect on a physically printed paper is that the outer sides of the squares would be shrinked due to the printer's ability to put color close to the paper edge - but I would measure the distance from the inner edges of the squares to paper edge to exactly one cm.

Resulting paper
The squares, espeshially those on right side seems to have moved partially out of paper. I know from printouts of labels that the size ratio does in fact match. So this proves to me that there is a mismatch between physically paper edges and the edge of the A4 canvas.

Print to PDF (Bullzip PDF printer installed on computer)
The issue doesn't appear when using this software to export to PDF. The edges maching perfectly. This means that only some printers is prone to the printout problem.

My solution/Workaround
I made my own A4 template that have guides that match the actual printer limits (cannot print any closer to the paper edge).
The backdraw with this workaround is that I cannot place e.g. a rectangle at a specific position on the paper measured from any paper edges.
If I need to print a paper where distances between object to paper edge is critical, I need to export to PDF first and then print from pdf.

Other software that uses same printer
I have not seen any other Windows programs that have similar problems with that printer - Inkscape only.


My goal is to be able to post a bug repport
But since the printer is both heavy and probably very expensive - I cannot expect that any developers have access to that specific printer model to do test.
How can I contribute so that the "printer alignment issue" hopefully one day can be fixed?

Well, as you know, Inkscape tends to be weak on printing issues. At least that's the way I see it. The bottom line is that the best way to make the issue known, and to make sure it's followed over time, is to make a bug report.

(I think next time the developers are looking for input for development, I'm going to say "Better Printing Support!!!")

Are you saying this is a problem with this one brand of printer? Or do you think it happens on a lot of different kinds of printers? If it happens on a lot of different printers, then likely they won't need access to that particular brand/model. Actually, it seems like that's a problem the devs need to solve in general -- the ability to test on different printers. I would probably just post the report, and leave it up to the developers to solve the testing problem. Actually they probably already know how to work out the logistics anyway. Inkscape has world class developers

(Also be sure to search for potential existing reports, before you submit a new one.)