The scaling represents a
magnification factor, or minimization factor, of the document to be printed,
along with the included graphic elements like letters or embedded images, which
will be magnified (stretched), or minimized (upset) by a factor
scaling / 100
on
printing.
For instance, a scaling of 108 means that a
picture document of 100 x 50 mm edge length is stretched by 108% of its
original size, thus it will later measure 108 x 54 mm .
A deviation from the normal scaling
default value of 100 (100% means original size) only makes sense for image documents like Bitmaps
(*.bmp), as their original size is – unlike text documents in text
editing programs - not bound, to pre-set paper formats like A4, A5 etc. It
makes no sense to display a text document, whose lines and line breaks are
adapted to A4, at a modified size. For this reason, MS Word, for
example, refuses such requests by displaying the following warning message:
On the other hand, under some circumstances, it
can make sense to print an image document which is just 2% too large to
fit the next smaller paper format, on 98% of its original
size.
However, in general, we advise you not to use
other scaling values than the default value of 100.