printing 8.5x11 as large as possible

[bloke]

I have an HP 1510...not fancy...

The largest print and smallest margins than I've found ("good enough" and WAY better than default) is to select "NO MARGINS", and "fit to page".

Also, selecting "A4" paper size (instead of 8.5" wide) seems to offer a slightly larger print and smaller margins yet.

"Scale" doesn't seem to do a dang thing...at least not when printing PDFs.

Any tips?

I AM - now- getting everything within 3/4ths of an inch to the page's four edges...and (ok...) I CAN - now - read the music.

...and y'all know me well enough to know that I ain't goin' nowhere to get it printed off on 10x14 (which should still be the size of most all concert music, but it isn't).

[tokuno]

I crop (Irfanview) the scans as tightly as I can to eliminate "double" margins prior to printing.
Un-helpful to your situation, I acknowledge, but I have a duplexing 11x17 laser printer. Prior to cataract surgery, I printed to 11x17 (scaled back a bit to fit the stand & folder) at max contrast. At that, I still had trouble differentiating notes.
Antibiotics, anesthesia, dental & vision implants, probably joint replacements at some point . . . I'm endlessly thankful for the availability of 20th century medical technology developments . . .

[the elephant]

When I set up Finale files that are a single page, I use what I consider to be "generous" margins (meaning that they look good while not wasting too much usable space).

These are 1" at the top and bottom and 0.5" right and left.

Recently I have been plagued with vision issues and have to combine very strong light, heavy magnification "readers", and "Roy Clark Big Note Guitar Book" huge sizes.

Usually, meaning for decades, I have set my staff height at .25", which is a little below what most good publishers use, and about the same as a lot of the online pay-and-print-it-yourself publishers.

And usually, my colleagues make fun of how "tiny" my music is. (They all are older than I am .) As we have aged, that "funning" has turned a bit more vocal… and. less "fun". While pitchforks and torches have yet to appear at a reading gig, they can't be far off.

This is why I reissued all my Christmas 5tet stuff, to make it easier to read. Now that my vision has finally crapped out I see how hard I have been making it for them — for many years.

In Finale, you set the staff height, then you set the point size of all your fonts. Recently, for Broughton, I made my own "dyslexia" edition (as I usually do) that respells all the crap careless composers spew onto pages that do not follow normal convention, like using sharps in descending chromatic lines, or the reverse. This sort of stuff is done a certain way for a reason, and I happen to benefit hugely from well-done copy. So I have always striven to provide the most readable copy I can, with as few distractions on the page as possible. BUT I ALWAYS HAD GOOD VISION, SO I NEVER CONSIDERED THE ACTUAL SIZE OF THINGS, just clarity in the part.

Now I am blowing stuff up as much as the page will allow, and that means also decreasing my margin sizes to the edge of the print field. I also have to find many more workable page turns because (unless you want accidentals that run into noteheads), doing this causes you to be able to fit far less music onto an 8.5x11" sheet of paper.

So, currently my margins are 0.3" on the sides to allow a bit more info on each system, and each system is .35" tall. (Same point size on the fonts, which is 24, and nets you a correctly-sized notehead that scales up or down with the staff height.) If I use my coil binder, I have to leave room for the 36 holes that run down the "spine" edge of the page. So left pages get 0.3"L and 0.5"R, and right pages get the opposite.

My printer picks this up perfectly. Here is a single page of my "edition" of the Broughton at full size. Everything I do (including breaths) has been entered into the file, so it is actually what I am playing. (I also made a few very small changes that make some stupid stuff more playable.) This is far easier for me to read than the published pencil copy I have used since the 1980s, the engraved published copy for sale today, or the copy included with the orchestra or band accompaniment package (which is the worst of the bunch, being truly TINY and CRAMPED).

So this is the smallest (tightest?) margins I can seem to print with the music being as practically large as possible. It is also the fewest notes you can get onto the page, which is unfortunate — this part is like 16 pages long! The staff height is more extreme than any of my quintet stuff, at 0.4", which is comically huge, but I have to be able to read it, so this is what it ended up being. I still have to use the super bright stand light and wear the Walmart readers…

Print this .pdf and see whether your HP can pick up everything all the way to the edges. Let me know. If it works, I can set some parts in Finale for you like this, which can make things easier.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/75brtywz ... hnara&dl=0

[bloke]

Thank you so very much for offering that for me to try out.

What I did manage to do (goofing around with settings and not knowing much of anything about my printer) was to get the top of the titles a half an inch away from the top of the page, the left edges of the staffs within a half an inch of the left side and the right sides to about 5/8 within the edge of the page, and the bottom: I only had to touch up a couple of crescendo/dominuendo things that were written below the notes on the last line and part of the boilerplate jazz on the bottoms of the first pages got cut off, so I was pretty happy with that.
These were typical PDFs for a next set of rehearsals and concert.. you know...
Ten years ago - when I could see, I wouldn't have cared.

(The first time, I just hit print and didn't look at any settings. That wasn't a good idea.)

When music is actually involved (you know: lots of notes and things), I write a good bit of stuff on it with my pencil, and I'd rather write it once on something I can read, rather than transferring all my pencil marks over to the real copies (supplied at the first rehearsal in the real folder).

I can still sort of play, but - when it gets to be the day that I can (not only not see, but) not play - none of this will matter anymore.