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Home - General / All posts - Exporting layouts to graphic file formats from 9 - plans?
Graeme

990 post(s)
#23-Jan-18 00:06

Layout / file / export / graphics file format..options is almost always how we deliver finished products in Manifold 8 and earlier. Can we expect an analogous feature set in 9? The current route of generating output from a layout via the Windows print routine is too limited, discussed in this thread.

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#23-Jan-18 07:51

Strongly supported.

Let me add that beneath export and the missing Create Image printing with all printer drivers I tested - direct printing or printing to different pdf-Printers - is only usable for points and simply has no likeness to the screen. So in effect we currently have a viewer and a viewer with editing functionality.

If that would change soon I could give 9 a chance in production and that would probably multiply feedback.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#23-Jan-18 08:37

I have to damp my critic of direct printing. May be I have to adjust thickness of colored lines better according to the printer facilities.

However I usually deliver PDF documents and advocate for an early implementation of an export PDF in the quality we'r used to in Mfd8.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#23-Jan-18 17:40

Klaus - why don't you use a PDF printer?

I grant my use of it is simple, but in every case I have tried printing to PDF (using a fairly wide variety of PDF printers, some better, some worse) results have been significantly better than with 8.

If you ever run into a problem with that, have you sent it in as a bug report?

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#23-Jan-18 19:47

Here's a radical alternative--not sure whether I am serious or playing devil's advocate.

Premise: all PCs can take a PDF file and direct it to a physical printer, when required.

So why allow direct printing from an application? It only adds headaches.

That is, how about only providing Export to PDF? No File > Print dialog at all--just get rid of it!

Abstract physical printing away, let the infrastructure handle it, with all the inherent particularities. It's already good at that! No reinventing of wheels.

antoniocarlos

609 post(s)
#23-Jan-18 20:52

Nope. :-).

Yes to file>print dialog. What you propose (to me) would just be annoying but it might set an industry trend and save some the world's trees. I might think about it only for layouts if the Layout component were a much more felxible printing and cartography friendly surface.

Cheers


How soon?

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#23-Jan-18 21:32

Klaus - why don't you use a PDF printer?

In Mfd 8 I export PDF all the time for separate maps if I not just create an image and copy/paste it as a figure integrated in reports. I dropped printing to a PDF printer because results of Mfd 8 export was better once I learned to set resolution in export options and some PDF printer drivers are slow an results poor.

My default printer is a usual small format printer because printing paper maps is not the main task.

So in Mfd 8 I was independent of the windows functions for printing. To be honest I rarely used direct printing even for Mfd tables, because an export to Excel gave me the flexibility I needed.

I'm not sure but I don't think that publishers use these windows functions. And printing maps is more publishing that printing reports.

I have no preference for dropping direct printing in Mfd 9. But I would like to have a good PDF export. This by the way is how I distributes my reports written in Word, too.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#24-Jan-18 15:59

But I would like to have a good PDF export.

OK, that's fair. So, to zero in on this a bit... for you, what is the practical difference between File - Export - PDF and File - Print (to a PDF printer)? In both cases the result is a PDF.

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#25-Jan-18 07:51

In the past I tested a lot of free PDF printers. They came with unwanted advertising and extra popups for a function that is integrated in MS Office apps, Mfd 8 and many other programs. So why should I use these printers and face faulty handling of transparency and other advanced features with some of them?

I nevertheless had to use these PDF drivers for Mfd 8 because other than other apps Mfd 8 clips the export of a layout to the printable area and this is enforced by the last used printer margins. I'm glad this will change.

Must admit: I will have to seriously test the Microsoft PDF driver. Haven't done so by the previous experience.

Anyway storing a different set of defaults for export and printing gives me the flexibility to simply switch between the demand for printing usual reports and mail and the very different requirements to create a map.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#25-Jan-18 13:34

So why should I use these printers and face faulty handling of transparency and other advanced features with some of them?

PDF printing software has come a long way in the last few years. There's the Microsoft stuff as well as continued availability of Adobe printing software, which is often bundled into other Adobe software you might have already purchased. Take a second pass through the more popular options and you may be able to find a newer generation PDF printer that you like.

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#01-Feb-18 16:02

Microsoft Print to PDF is not available for Windows 7.

So this driver is not suited as a standard printer in a shop with mixed environment.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

adamw


10,447 post(s)
#24-Jan-18 07:50

We plan to address blurry / small texts in printed web images discussed in that thread. (This only happens with intelligent web images which provide you different-sized labels for different scales, we need to special-case them during printing to control the scale better.)

What are other issues? (We are aware of several and are working to fix them, so I am just trying to make sure we don't miss anything.)

In general, yes, we do plan to have a specialized export to PDF. But that's for advanced features (layers / hyperlinks, etc). For "normal" prints, printing to PDF should work perfectly fine, so if it does not work well enough, we'd like to fix it.

Graeme

990 post(s)
#24-Jan-18 08:04

Thanks for the explanation about the web image quality issue Adam. We almost always use the "..export" route in 8 so can't really add anything about "..print", just acknowledging the page setup quirk to be entirely windows, we'll live with it and look forward to new functionality in 9.

If there's a list of "planned features.." maybe making a dot point list available would be helpful, especially for those of us relatively new to it. Quite understand if you'd prefer not though.

adamw


10,447 post(s)
#24-Jan-18 08:18

The additions and fixes for layouts will appear in the cutting edge builds very soon, we will see them there.

One more thing I'd add regarding PDF: a big reason why we are feeling so confident about producing PDFs via direct printing is the Microsoft printer driver for PDF that comes by default with Windows 10. It works well and since it comes with the operating system, it is available with no additional effort to a lot of people.

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