How can I have printers to print my PDF as-is?

[vgiralt]

Hi, I'm using fpf2 to generate PDFs to print labels from a Django application. The PDF looks perfectly right on the viewers, even when I voerly a grid with the exact label measures. But, then, when we print them, we have two printers that do different displacements, both horizontal and vertical, that place the texts at wrong places that do not fit with the label cuts.

Is there a way to tell fpdf2 to take the displacements into account so I do not have to redo all positioning calculations?

Thanks!

[andersonhc]

Hi @vgiralt! What you're experiencing is unfortunately quite common when printing labels, and I've had this kind of problems myself with PDFs as well as text editors.

fpdf2 generates PDFs with precise coordinates in a virtual page space, and since your output aligns correctly in PDF viewers, it means the layout itself is correct.

The displacement you're seeing typically comes from the printing side, not the PDF generation. Printers and their drivers can introduce offsets due to things like non-printable margins, scaling settings (e.g. “fit to page”), or hardware calibration differences — which would explain why two printers produce different shifts.

fpdf2 does not have visibility into or control over printer behavior, so it cannot automatically compensate for these offsets.

That said, a common workaround is to measure the horizontal/vertical displacement for each printer and compensate the offset in your layout.

You may also want to check:

• Printer settings (disable scaling like “fit to page”)
• Whether the printer supports borderless or exact-size printing
• Any calibration options in the printer driver

[vgiralt]

Thanks a lot for your kind reply. I was thinking along those lines, but I was hopping (naïvely) that there might exist some magical PDF incantations to reset those "printer stupidities". I'll look for the options you suggest in the affected printer drivers and hope for the best. On my over 40 years of work in IT I've developed a "hate" for printers on par to my love of LaTeX, DVI and PDF :-)

Again, thanks for your time and for such an excellent tool.