FitPlot: Usage & Commands: Pagination

Pagination

Since the 2.5 version FitPlot introduces the pagination concept. A FitPlot document is no more limited to one page only (corresponding to the page size area). The document area extends now indefinitely toward right and down and can be encapsulated in a grid of "sheets" (horizontal pages x vertical pages) each one corresponding to the current page size.

Each grid cell will represent a sheet of the same size of the others, but with the task to represent a different zone of the working area.
An example of a 2x3=6 pages is the following:

Fig. 1 - 2 horizontal x 3 vertical pages

In this way an image can be printed virtually at unlimited size, composing a mosaic of small portions of the images, each with the same size as the page setup format chosen.
Due to the printer margins area (borders of the sheet where printer heads do not operate), it is available an option to overlap the pages in paginations, so two adjacent pages may have some common part of the printed image to help superimposition. See example in fig. 2 where the red areas represent the overlapping areas. These areas are printed* on both adjacent pages.
[*excluding areas out of printable margins]
The order of printing goes from left to right and from top to bottom.

Fig. 2 - 2 horizontal x 3 vertical pages with overlap

As from 3.2 version, FitPlot introduces the option to print registration marks to facilitate the "puzzle" recomposition.
Four marks are printed in each corner, in the middle of the overlapped area, bringing a row / column numeration as in the following figure

Other necessary unnumbered marks are printed along each side, in the overlapped area, at a distributed distance from the two opposite corners, in number of 1 each 4 inches or 10 cm or 250 pts (according with the current unit of measure).

How to set the pagination?

Choose File->Pagination menu or the command from the toolbar.
A dialog will show as in figure 3.

The pagination dialog

Fig. 3 - the pagination dialog

If pages are more than just 1, you will see the little button on the top right of the FitPlot main window, now enabled.
Clicking on it will open the pagination drawer (figure 4). Here you can see the thumbnails of your document pages.
You can click directly on the desired page to let it be "current" and appear in the editing area, either you can cycle through pages with the page stepper or type directly the number you want.
The upper knob is there to change the thumbnails size.
You can live edit the document, that is, you will see changes made in the main view reflected at once in the thumbnails. This is a cool feature, but it can slow down editing operations, especially with many pages in the document, so you can regain speed just closing the drawer. It will avoid thumbnail refreshing. When you have finished to edit, open again the drawer and your changes will be there, calculated just once you open.

Fig. 4 - the pagination drawer

Drop on pagination drawer

From the 2.8 version, FitPlot allows the drop on the pagination drawer.

Drag & Drop from FitPlot toward drawer (works only one object at time):
- With alt key pressed:
  the image is copied on the destination page, relative position on the page is maintained.
- With alt+cmd keys pressed:
  the image is moved on the destination page, relative position on the page is maintained.
Drag & Drop from Finder (or other App) toward drawer:
the image (or group of images, or even a folder containing images) are inserted in the FitPlot document destination page, positioned starting from the center of the page itself.

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