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I'm using Pages 09 to prepare a document and have just noticed that the Zoom level (at least on my install) is not WYSIWYG.

The Page setup is correctly showing A4 as the output paper size.

The default Zoom and the Zoom setting for the document are both at 125%.

The computer is a Macbook Air 13.3", so has a resolution of 1440X900.

As far as I can tell it the zoom level would need to be about 175% to be correct.

(A quick look at Wikipedia shows that the Air has a DPI of 128PPI which may be the issue)

Is there a default that can be changed to set Pages to assume that DPI is greater than the default (presumably 72 ppi)

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WYSIWYG has nothing to do with the zoom level?! Maybe I don't really get your question. Why do you assume that the default zoom level has to be 175%? – gentmatt Jan 16 '12 at 16:13
I would assume that at 100% zoom the width on screen would be the width of the selected output paper. At 100% What I See is not What I Get – Dan Kelly Jan 16 '12 at 16:25
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As far as I know, WYSIWYG refers to the rendered output of your document. They way media is placed, it will be printed. Therefore also a simple editor as TextEdit can be referred to being WYSIWYG (in it's default configuration). I don't think that it means "this is how your document looks like a 100%". I mean, it would be strange to say that the the rendered output of a digital document is only WYSIWYG when the zoom is 100%. But I'll let anybody correct me... – gentmatt Jan 16 '12 at 16:38
In my experience there are usually scaling artefacts present even with true WYSYWIG editors. At 100%, if the page on screen is the same size as the output document, I can accurately trust line weight, text position, etc. – Dan Kelly Jan 16 '12 at 16:56

2 Answers

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To answer your question simply. No. Pages is great at what it does, but I've yet to find a way to get it to truly be WYSIWYG.

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If you're simply looking for exactly the zoom necessary to be 1:1 with real life, I'd recommend telling it to scale with window size. Then resize the window until you achieve a 1:1 ratio and remember that zoom value.

It's quite difficult to code applications to know exactly what's WYSIWYG, as screens have lots of different resolutions.

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I understand that. What used to be great (when I were a lad...) about the mac was that Mac OS was always 72 dpi, hence things were much more predictable. That said with Apples control of the whole widget they should be able to get Pages to find the PPI of the particular Macbook... – Dan Kelly Jan 16 '12 at 16:57
Good solution, unless you're using the Full Page view to remove distractions, in which case Zoom ends up 200%+ when setting to Fit Width... Looks like I'm working at 150% for the time being. – Dan Kelly Jan 16 '12 at 17:00
You can change zoom while in full screen mode if you use ⌘> and ⌘<. Unfortunately you can't see the zoom you're currently at, but it works. – timothymh Jan 16 '12 at 17:04
Oops! I just re-read your comment and realized I misunderstood what you said. Sorry! That's too bad, but full page view can't be full-size anyway on a MacBook Air, as the screen isn't tall enough... – timothymh Jan 16 '12 at 17:05
The screen's wide enough for portrait A4 width, which would be good enough for the checking I need to do... – Dan Kelly Jan 16 '12 at 17:08
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