Printing Dunyazad PDF files

The PDF e-books in the Dunyazad Digital Library are designed to be read on a screen, which has some consequences for their layout: there are no left and right pages, page margins are small, font size is large, images have reduced resolution, and the lines are not register-true.

Fortunately, you can still produce decent hardcopies on your printer – just ignore the books’ native format of 6 × 8 in.

A good idea is to print on half-sized paper (half-letter 5.5 × 8.5 in, or A5), scaling down the pages to about 80%. You may need to get a PDF reader app that allows you to set an arbitrary scaling factor, for instance PDF-XChange Viewer (of which there is a free version).

Alternatively, you can print two pages next to each other on standard paper (letter or A4) in landscape format. Either your PDF reader or your printer driver (or both) will let you choose this option.

Of course, if you prefer large print then you can simply print single pages on standard letter or A4 paper – preferably using a PDF reader that allows you to set your own scaling factor.

In all cases, double-sided printing will reduce paper consumption and thus printing costs.

Since printers, printer drivers and application programs not always seem to act or interact entirely rationally, you may have to experiment a bit before you get the desired results, but it can be done!

For binding the printed pages you can either use ring binders, some binding system, or, for instance, a hole puncher and a piece of string.

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