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I'm trying to use TP in a task for which it's probably not intended. Mainly for convenience, avoiding switching to Word or Excel or my image editor.

I have a long file whose font is my usual Courier New Regular size 10. To get it onto as few printed pages as possible I've so far changed that to Arial Narrow size 9. That should make it possible to get two 'columns', using Block Select Mode. Screenshots hopefully clarify. (Embedding with 'Img' still fails, so links.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nuir3e5m59zon ... .jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvh14yyrcjcgq ... .jpg?raw=1

How do I preserve the 'left aligned' appearance of the pasted block please?

You don't. Arial is a variable-pitch font. TextPad is a text editor, not a word processor, and it positions text horizontally by counting tabs and spaces. It does not add the widths of individual characters.

To do what you're doing you'll need to find a narrow fixed-pitch font.

searching for several fix-width font names with an additional "narrow" or "condensed" gives free or payable results ...

Thanks, understood.

Meanwhile, impatient to complete the task, I opted for copy/pasting graphic selections into my image editor for editing.

But now it's not text, but a picture of text.

After getting the task accomplished by first converting to greyscale, I studied it further. My conclusion is that the colours (145 in this example) are present in the TextPad source display. Presumably to smooth the appearance of each text character, especially at small font sizes. Not sure if there are options in either TP or Windows 10 settings to test that conclusion?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/evjrqs0rdtyfx ... .png?raw=1

And for good measure - as I'm never confident what happens to images in the course of their internet uploads/downloads- here's an iPhone photo of my screen:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fjc711rco4z6 ... .JPG?raw=1

P.S: For my own reasurance, would someone please confirm the screenshot can be satisfactorily downloaded for the intended zoom viewing in an image editor?

ben_josephs wrote:But now it's not text, but a picture of text.

After printing that doesn't matter for my purposes:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9xy4yuhq9g87e ... .jpg?raw=1

MudGuard wrote:searching for several fix-width font names with an additional "narrow" or "condensed" gives free or payable results ...

Thanks but I already have several. I rather like 'M +1m'.

terrypin wrote:After printing that doesn't matter for my purposes

Nowadays the technique to "print" to a file is widespread, especially "print to PDF", speak: digital printing. There, pictures can't be searched for text anymore and need much more space to be stored.

Even when printing physically it's a difference if you send text or a picture to the device. Given your quality reduced example pictures your ink/laser consumtion is much higher for pictures than for actual text.

Can your printer simply be asked to print 2 pages per sheet?
or 4 if your eyesight is good.

IanOfYork wrote:Can your printer simply be asked to print 2 pages per sheet?
or 4 if your eyesight is good.

Thanks, hadn't realised it but yes it can! It's an old TS205 Pixma but under its Paper-Saving option there are 2-on-1 and 4-on-1 printing options.

Just tested with the 2-on-1 and quite good result. But not quite the compression or editing flexibility of my graphic method.

Lot quicker to get the printer to handle it for you ;-)

Seems that my printer will go as far as 16 pages per sheet.
I suspect that my eyesight might stop at about 4 pages per sheet.