Paper Sizes and Formats
swiftpublisher.com
swiftpublisher.com
Now, a holdout is the "Oficio" size, which created a lot of problems for us. This size is usually described in printer drivers as Fanfold or Long Bond, and it is very similar to U.S. Legal size, but one inch shorter in its length (8.5 × 13 in, 216 × 330 mm). South American paper mills often call it "Oficio 2". This was, and still is in many regards, the required format for all official bureaucratic and court paperwork.
This created a lot of trouble for us because in most Spanish localizations companies (example: Microsoft in MS Office) simply translated the "Legal" paper size as "Oficio". Then every secretary and clerk here selected it believing it is "our" Oficio, only to find that text was cropped at the bottom because that "Oficio" was in fact one inch longer than our format. This led to all kinds of manual (mis)formatting.
I think this format had a German origin and came to us through old Spanish practices, but I can't be sure.
Again, thankfully this is becoming a thing of the past since A4 is slowly becoming the standard...
EDIT: That paper size is also known as "US Government Legal" and "Foolscap" and according to Wikipedia is still in use in various parts of the world.
> F4 is a paper size 210 mm × 330 mm (8.27 in × 13.0 in).
Which is different than what GP states (216 mm x 330 mm).
It's the exact same thing with a lot of the US customary units vs. metric debate - so many more of the arguments actually boil down to mistaking "I'm familiar with this so it seems better" for meaning one is objectively better. It does definitely lead to some funny assertions, like people asserting that billions of people's ease of using metric units or Celsius temperatures must be false since the units are apparently not "human scale" etc.!
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0⅛¼⅜½⅝¾⅞1
So the measurement, when taken, is 1⅜".
I've seen inch rulers with different fractions, e.g. one end might be eights, the other sixteenths, turn it over and there are tenths.
(I don't know how this works with digital measuring devices — I grew up in Britain so have never used inches professionally. Only in Warhammer and TV screens.)
To you, it’s obvious and natural that „half” is 1/2.
To me, it looks off and I have to „convert” it in my mind to 0.5, which is the way I think about it.
That said, as soon as I need to do any arithmetic on the number (including compare it to other numbers) I convert it from fraction to decimal.
In metric a meter isn't as nicely divisible. Of course we get around that by subdividing 1.2m or 1.5m instead (or 0.8, kitchens and lots of furniture is designed in outer dimensions that are fractions and multiplies of 0.8 meters). But that only works well if you write them out add decimals, because saying "this cupboard is 1/2 0.8 meter wide" is just silly
True. For example, as an European I'd obviously have some difficulties expressing sizes in inches and feet, but I'd have some difficulties too if I was buying a new monitor or TV and the clerk asked me the screen size in centimeters.
However, in the aforementioned scenario (buying a new TV), the correct answer is always: "the biggest you have".
But "the biggest you have" is not the right answer for TV size: if your room is small and your TV is too large, it's uncomfortable to view it. The TV needs to be sized according to the viewing distance. Usually, this isn't an issue for most people: too-large TVs are usually outside their budget. But this is changing, as bigger and bigger TVs become less expensive.
What I mean by that comment is that people might come to a store and think: "Wow, this 65" TV is huge, I don't need that". But they are forgetting that when watching a movie, a lot of screen space is unused, because the aspect ratio is different (those black bars on the top and bottom).
So, if you can fit the TV somewhere, it's always a good idea to pick a larger one than you think you need.
"The basis for the whole system is the A0 format which has an area of one square meter. With an aspect ratio equal to the square root of two, a sheet of A0 paper ends up being 841 × 1189 millimeters. Figuring out the dimensions of the subsequent paper sizes does not require any real mathematical strain since each ensuing size can be created by simply folding the paper in half with the crease parallel to the shortest sides. If you do this with an A0 sheet of paper, the resulting dimensions will be 594 × 841 millimeters, or the A1 format. Take note that the height of A1 is equal to the width of A0"
So if the drawing doesn't fit on a standard paper paper we just take the width of an A0 (841mm) and pick some arbitrary length. My personal limit is 200cm because then it becomes a bit impractical to handle. And if it really, really doesn't fit in the 841mm width, I'll take the edges of the 900mm that are usually cut off too instead of splitting the drawing awkwardly over two papers.
I saw both methods being taught at school when I was a child, though only with A2 or A3 size paper.
> Early pen plotters, e.g., the Calcomp 565 of 1959, worked by placing the paper over a roller that moved the paper back and forth for X motion, while the pen moved back and forth on a track for Y motion. The paper was supplied in roll form and had perforations along both edges that were engaged by sprockets on the rollers.
> In the 1980s, the small and lightweight HP 7470 introduced the "grit wheel" mechanism, eliminating the need for perforations along the edges, unlike the Calcomp plotters two decades earlier. The grit wheels at opposite edges of the sheet press against resilient polyurethane-coated rollers and form tiny indentations in the sheet. As the sheet is moved back and forth, the grit wheels keep the sheet in proper registration due to the grit particles falling into the earlier indentations, much like the teeth of two gears meshing. The pen is mounted on a carriage that moves back and forth in a line between the grit wheels, representing the orthogonal axis. These smaller "home-use" plotters became popular for desktop business graphics and in engineering laboratories
I think plotting on sheets was more common though.
Sadly, this meant that the paper would have natural curl to it, but it wasn't a big deal once you'd taped it to your drafting table with masking tape.
It is annoying trying to get good sized frames, maybe a lot of them are custom made too? Often they’ll at least have a custom mat board cut I think.
I can order frames online (Craig Frames company). I was just surprised when I found out that this rather common large format photo printing paper size was a very uncommon frame size, and at three different local stores which sell a lot of large frames, they had little to no selection in that particular size.
So where are the Letter-size picture frames? I want to hang these credentials on my wall, or frame them and place them on a shelf! They will look very nice that way! But all picture frames on the market are for 8x10 photographs! So it's horrible; I can't use the standard-issue, original certificates at all. I can't print them as-is, and reducing their size does not yield the 8x10 aspect ratio you need.
Eventually, over the course of several years, I've managed to amass a few 8.5x11 picture frames from thrift stores. It wasn't easy, they don't match one another, and they're uncommon, but they do exist. Likewise, no big-box store or specialty framing store seems to carry such an animal.
So if these frames are so unobtanium, why are these authorities issuing certificates in this size? Don't they know we have little hope of framing them nicely? Surely there is some sort of disconnect, and surely there is a market-niche opportunity, especially for college-grads, like Josten's, or our college bookstore, to source these and sell them to us!
Take a look at a company called Craig Frames. That’s where I get my A3+ frames and they are lovely. Pay attention to which ones are solid wood and not just a veneer, if you have a preference. Though the veneer looks good too.
My only frustration with this situation is that I have to go online as local shops ignore that size.
https://www.michaels.com/shop/frames/wall-frames/document-fr...
(and also as “diploma frames” or “certificate frames”)
Local framing can be art in itself, and can definitely enhance art. As an example, I have a Vonnegut silkscreen print ("Black Heart") that I find quirky and endearing and love its origin -- but is a bit of a challenge to present in a way that doesn't dominate anything with which it shares a wall. I would have gone with a large mat and oversized frame to reduce the impact of some of the more... exotic... color choices; but the framing shop I worked with proposed a double frame with an outer black frame and an inner painted green wood frame that /exactly/ matches the color of the piece, and the result is stunning.
Also, if you cut Tabloid in half you get letter, so it's not complete arbitrary.
Things I learned working on printers at HP
We also had to get a cheque scanner and a book of sample cheques shipped over to integrate that in to the software, that was a fun experience!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizing
And paper weight:
https://www.strathmoreartist.com/faq-full/paper-weight-what-...
And then you may feel inspired to acquire paper of all the different types and weights and sample how they perform with various media. Art supply stores, besides stocking premade pads and sketchbooks, often have a back area with drawers of loose paper and slightly more exotic things like acetate. However, while you can get something to a rough standard, you will never really get the same paper twice because the processes and available ingredients keep changing.
- The A0 sheet is a square metre
- A1 is half that, A2 half again etc.
- It's simple to calculate the weight of any particular A-series sheet.
This is (nowadays only rarely) useful when determining the postage. If I have 6 A4 pages of typical 80g/m² office paper to post, the weight is 6 × (80 / 2 / 2 / 2 / 2) = 30g.
Until recently, the cheapest national postal rate was for up to 50g, so this was a relevant calculation for the once-in-five-years I sent a multipage letter.
An older relative used to say "if a note is smaller than A4 it does not exist". I think it was from long experience of people losing important information when it was printed on a paper size smaller than A4. I try to keep that in mind whenever the frugal homunculus in me wants to print information in smaller formats to save on paper.
The standardisation of ISO paper sizes is nice, but it's also an annoying limitation when it comes to folding paper planes (if one wants to do it with small children that are not yet competent users of scissors), because it limits the amount of models that are viable.
Apparently someone across the pond (in Europe?) didn't know the US doesn't use the A0 paper system.
And then, other people who knew the A0 paper system didn't realize the beauty of it using √2 ratio.
Weird thread there.
Need to make a bigger version? It scales so easily.
Anytime you see the US doing something different from the rest of the world, investigate to see who first invented and popularized it: it almost certainly came from outside the US. Whereas if there's some global standard that even the US uses, it probably got started in the US.
As is widely remarked the US does use metric where it makes sense to do so. It’s just mostly not consumer-facing.