printable area in a page size

[al_wong@adobeforums.com]

A.I. 10

When I open Document Setup and select Inches for Units I see width of 8.5 in and 11 in for Height. So I open a illustration and see a solid square (View->Show Artboard) and a dotted square (View->Show Page Tiling).

Next I do a Show Rulers and see the ruler in inches on the horizontal and vertical. As I drag the the vertical slider on the horizontal ruler I see
2 things:

1)On the dotted square (page tiling boundary) far right side vertical in the Options box for Info section I see a X = 8.313 in

2)On the solid square (artboard boundary) far right side vertical in the Options box for Info section I see a X = 8.497 in

I understand that the printable area is bounded by the imageable area and I believe this is the dotted box (page tiling area) as I did a print test and my image seems to print objects inside the dotted box and nothing outside of the dotted box.

So I have 2 questions:

1)Why isn't the dotted box X far right vertical set to 8.5 in? (since my Document setup width is set to 8.5 in) It seems artboard is set close to 8.5 in but we can print based only on the boundary of dotted box/page tiling. Is the printer driver making the dotted box/page tiling less than the 8.5 in. (Note the printer can print on 8.5 X 11 size and even larger)
Do printers never print the full 8.5 X 11 size? (HP design jet) It doesnt make sense to have any AI setting 8.5 by 11 if the dotted box/page tiling is set to less than this size.

2)Is there a way to resize so that solid and dotted boxes are the SAME size that is artboard and page tiling are the same so when I do a illustration I know for sure anything inside this arrangment will be printed and anything outside is not, 2 boxes seem confusing. I just want 1 box and my illustration will be drawn inside this box.

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

The printable area comes from the printer driver. Change the media size in
the print d/box (printer setup in earlier versions) and the printable area
will change.

Nearly all inkjets (and other printers) have an unprintable area which they
use for their paper handling (there are a few printers that will do
edge-to-edge printing). Inkjets typically have 3 borders the same size and
one border which is larger

[Jacob_Bugge@adobeforums.com]

Al,

When you move the Selection Tool, Info only shows values in certain steps; when you create artwork, such as a path, you may get the accurate values, so do not worry about 8,497 = 8,5.

The dotted lines should show the printable area (dotted) for the current printer at a given paper size (solid). So they can only coincide for a printer which prints to the edge; that is very rare because the edge is used for getting the paper through.

You may set the paper size to your desired print size and create crop marks coinciding with it, and forget about the dotted lines; just use an adequate paper size. Or you may place artwork and cropmarks elsewhere in the work area. See Help>Crop marks.