Printing from TextEdit sometimes seems like a black art — often the font sizing of your printed document will be much smaller than the font size used in the onscreen master . You might be thinking , “ I thought the Mac was supposed to be aWYSIWYGmachine ? ” ( Nevermind for now that nothing is sincerely WYSIWYG ; that ’s a topic for another day . ) Well , the solution is that your Mac is trying to give you WYSIWYG , and that ’s the drive of the problem . ( If you just need the fix without the account , skip down tothe Solution sectionor take a spirit at what Christopher Breen had to say on the same topic last twilight ; the next few paragraph tacklewhythis happens in a bit more particular . )
The first thing to earn is that TextEdit is not Microsoft Word , nor any other pure word central processing unit . Rather , TextEdit is a schoolbook editor in chief . The distinction may seem a fine one , but I think it ’s relevant here . In Word , and most other “ literal ” word processor , regardless of how wide or narrow you make your redaction window , your note will bear on to wrap at the precise same point — and that point is prescribe by the printed page ’s margin setting , not the breadth of the onscreen window .
When you spell in a text editor , however , things are dissimilar . Most schoolbook editors , admit TextEdit , wrapper long lines at the correct edge of the editing windowpane . Make your editing window wider , and your lines will get longer ; narrow the windowpane , and the lines will get shorter . This is exactly what TextEdit does in its default style — as you resize the window , your text will be reflowed such that the lines weaken near the right edge of the windowpane .
And that ’s what causes the trouble . When you recount TextEdit to publish , it ’s faced with a dilemma : should it print things as it sees them on screen , or should it rely on the chosen font sizing and margin to determine how things look ? TextEdit is really pose between a rock and a hard piazza here . On the one hand , you ’ve set up your document with a certain font sizing , which you would expect to see when you print it . On the other paw , you ’re looking at a window that show line breaks following sure words , and you might bear to see those breaks in the same spots in the impress rendering . But what if a certain line has more words in it than will tally at the default font size of it , given the printed page ’s margins ? Should TextEdit let out the line and keep your choose font size of it , or should it switch the font sizing to make the tidings fit on the credit line , as shown on the screen ?
By nonremittal , TextEdit does the latter — it tighten the font size until the line recess are where you see them on the screen , giving you ( one form of ) WYSIWYG yield . Hence , your three - page essay on the merits of theNewton Message Pad 2000as the ultimate PDA might only fall out to be a few paragraph long , depending on the width of the TextEdit window when you publish .
result
So how can you avoid this ? As Chris noted last fall , the answer is quite simple ; before printing process , opt Format - > Wrap to Page . When you do , TextEdit will reformat your text file , showing the text wrapping within the page ’s allowance . When you print , the output signal will use your specified font sizing , not some possibly microscopical reading of the font size you chose . If you like cut in a wider window , just select Format - > Wrap to Window when you ’re done impression to render to the other view . you may toggle quickly between these two musical mode using the Shift - Command - W crosscut .
you could see how this all influence in the following movie :
As you may see , when the windowpane is widen greatly after the first sampling print , the leave impress page has a much small font , and the textual matter takes up much less of the page . flip on Wrap to Page , however , and everything looks decent on the sample distribution printout .
