Print

The Print section is the final step — sending your document to a printer or exporting it as a PDF. The column on the left shows your list of print jobs (one for each media type you’ve defined, plus any assembly guide jobs). The right side shows the settings for the selected job.

Settings

Print Jobs

The job list on the left shows one print job per media type. If your document uses multiple media types (e.g., card for the cover and plain paper for the inside), each gets its own job so you can print them separately. Assembly guide jobs also appear here if applicable — these have a Media popup so you can choose which paper size the guide is scaled to.

When there’s more than one job in the list, Octavo adds an All Media job that prints everything together.

All Media

The All Media job prints your whole document — every media type, plus the assembly guide if there is one — as a single print run. How it behaves depends on your setup:

• If your media types share a printer, Octavo can tell the printer to switch trays automatically. You’ll see a First Page / Subsequent Pages grid where you can adjust the tray and stock used for each.
• If your printer only has one tray, everything prints as one job and you swap the paper over manually.
• If your media types are assigned to different printers, or have different sizes, they can’t be combined — print each job separately instead.

Media Settings

Shows the Printer, Tray, Stock, Size, and Weight for the selected job’s media type. These are read-only when they’ve been set on the Media tab — go there to change them. If however you’ve left things generic on the Media tab, you can set them here.

Sheets to Print

Choose which sheets to include in this print job:

• All sheets — Print everything.
• Selected sheets (from page strip) — Print only the sheets whose pages are selected in the page strip.

You’ll notice we’re referring to “sheets” here rather than “pages”. After imposition, there will be multiple pages on a sheet. Octavo automatically works out which sheets are required based on the pages you select.

Copies

The number of copies to print.

Collation

Choose how multiple copies are ordered:

• Collate — Prints complete sets (all pages of copy 1, then all pages of copy 2, etc.).
• Stack — Prints all copies of each page together (all copies of page 1, then all copies of page 2, etc.).

Duplex

Controls double-sided printing. See Duplex for more about how Octavo handles duplex printing.

• Automatic — The printer handles double-sided printing automatically. (Will be disabled if your printer does not support this.)
• Manual — You flip the paper yourself between sides.

When Manual is selected, additional options appear:

• Sides — Choose the print order: Both sides (front first), Both sides (back first), Front sides only, or Back sides only.
• Pause between sides — Enable to have Octavo pause between printing the front and back sides, giving you time to flip the paper.
• Use opposite page order for back side — Enable to reverse the order of the back sides, which some printers need for manual duplex to line up correctly. (The label shows which order that means in brackets.)

Page Order

Choose Normal or Reverse order for the printed sheets.

Quality

Print quality options, populated from your printer’s capabilities. The available choices depend on which printer is selected.

Colour

Choose between Colour and B&W output.

Printer Settings

A collapsible section that shows additional printer-specific options provided by your printer driver. The options here vary depending on your printer.

It is recommended that you set your printer settings through Octavo’s interface, so that Octavo can manage certain settings that need to have certain values.

Actions

The buttons at the bottom of the section:

• Export PDF — Save a PDF file instead of printing. There are two choices:
  • Imposed PDF (for printing) — The sheets exactly as they’d be printed, for printing from another app or computer.
  • Screen PDF (cropped, in reading order) — One page per document page, in reading order. Useful for checking your work, or sharing a copy to read on screen.
• Show Print Dialog — Open the standard macOS print dialog, just in case you need additional control. (You won’t find paper size or orientation in there — Octavo manages those itself, since the sheets are already imposed for your media.)
• Print — Send the job to the printer.

There’s also File -> Export PDF… in the menu bar — a shortcut that exports the imposed PDF for your whole document (all media, all sheets) without needing to visit this pane.