How to get XPP printer to print on 11x17 paper?

Question

We have XPP 8.4 with a new Kyocera TaskAlfa 5551ci printer.

Each time we get a new printer, we can set it up to print on 8.5x11 paper (which works) but setting up XPP to print on 11x17 paper is a problem every time. We try various tray files and tray names but nothing seems to work.

My current test only prints the last few lines on a page. I have the XPP print dialog set to print crop marks and a slug line at the top but neither appear. I even copied an existing 11x17 printer profile, and just changed the printer to our new XPP printer but I got the same result: only part of the page printed, no crop marks, no slug line.

What things should we look for to make XPP print on 11x17 paper?

Thank you!
Chuck

Bart Terryn · Accepted Answer

Chuck, 
 From what I see above it looks like for your printer the name of the tray is "tabloid" 
 So the following entries in your tray control file should make this work in a more XPP like way. 
 The prime advantage of using a tray control file over differently named printers is that XPP will pick the correct tray for you. 
 So how about trying: 
 valid_paper_defines: lettertray 8.5i 11i tol=2 tabloid 11i 17i end_valid_paper_defines 
 Oh and I forgot to tell you that there is a tray.ps file that if you send it to the printer it will print a page with the known tray names. 
 You can find this file in the ..\xz\distr\sys\od\ folder.

Jonathan Dagresta · Answer

BTW, for everyone's edification there is a whole chapter on Tray Control Files in Chapter 6 of the Managing XPP manual (manxpp.pdf). It goes into all the details and describes a number of helper PS files (e.g. trays.ps and prconfig.ps) that can be used with printers to help set up tray control files. 
 Remember that the latest versions of all the XPP documentation for all "current" releases (currently XPP 8.4, 9.0, and 9.1) is always available at http://docs.sdl.com for perusing or downloading.

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How to get XPP printer to print on 11x17 paper?