Printing by logical page number
Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 10:56 am
If you select Preferences - Page Display Options - use logical page numbers then the user viewing a PDF is presented with a display which shows logical numbers and not physical page numbers (or where the physical page number is displayed as well it is less prominent). Thus thumbnails show the logical page number only, the page number display at the bottom of the panel has the logical page number in large bold (and the physical page number smaller) and if you type in a number of a page you want to go to the number will be assumed to be a logical number.
But when it comes to printing, if you type in a page range to be printed the numbers are taken to be physical numbers, not logical numbers. To present a smooth and consistent user experience it would be better if, when the use logical page numbers option is specified, page numbers typed into the Print panel were interpreted as logical numbers.
I tend to think that there are two groups of users of PDFs. There are "creator users" who create PDFs using the full range of features, and there are "view/print users" who generally just view and print PDFs created by others
There are many PDF X-Change Editor functions which use physical page numbers and I can see that physical page numbers can have advantages of precision for "creator users" (they are unique whereas you can have duplicate logical numbers - though nobody would want to) but for "view/print users" I think it is important that they should be able to use just logical numbers - for print as well as view.
But when it comes to printing, if you type in a page range to be printed the numbers are taken to be physical numbers, not logical numbers. To present a smooth and consistent user experience it would be better if, when the use logical page numbers option is specified, page numbers typed into the Print panel were interpreted as logical numbers.
I tend to think that there are two groups of users of PDFs. There are "creator users" who create PDFs using the full range of features, and there are "view/print users" who generally just view and print PDFs created by others
There are many PDF X-Change Editor functions which use physical page numbers and I can see that physical page numbers can have advantages of precision for "creator users" (they are unique whereas you can have duplicate logical numbers - though nobody would want to) but for "view/print users" I think it is important that they should be able to use just logical numbers - for print as well as view.
