InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by Pierre_Admin on 2012/02/08 21:41

There were a few threads that discussed grid printing issues.

I'd like to combine these into a single thread. Could users comment the difficulties here...

[quote=Jon]

I have to jump through hoops to get a presentable and acceptable print-out. I should be able to print directly from IQ, but I cannot. Ecco is notorious for poor printing, but it shines in comparison.

[/quote]

Presumably this is grid printing (not HTML pane printing).
Which grid printing did you use ? With what settings ?
Did you require columns ?
Gantt ?
Didn't the WYSIWYG printing do the job correctly ? and why not ?

Comments

Presumably this is grid printing (not HTML pane printing).
1. Both are not up to par.
  1. WYSIWYG
    1. There should be an easier way to insure that you can print the grid to a page directly from IQ. I have to fiddle with column widths incessantly bouncing between print preview and the grid. Inevitably the working grid (yes, I know I can now create a duplicate for printing purposes, but this is just another work around and adds to complexity). What I end up doing is printing the grid to pdf in landscape on an absurdly large page (11x17). I then open the pdf, and print to a normal page. It works, but nobody should have to do this.
      1. If this is unresolvable, then at least provide an option to have a printer default. As it is now, I have to choose my pdf driver each time I use this work around. Ecco allows this.
    2. Even if I want to print the numbers and items, there is an excellent chance they will be printed on separate pages. I have to narrow the width of the item column and have to guesstimate where the breaks would be that would force the column to a new page.
      1. Perhaps some indicators as they exist in Excel would help.
    3. Even when direct from IQ printing works, the cell where the cursor was located is printed. I can't describe it well, but try it. It prints as it appears as it does on the screen.
  2. HTML printing
    1. Item colors do not print. I noted what appears to be incorrect html coding in another post.
    2. The value to WYSIWYG is that the items are indented in accordance with my settings. They are not in html making them very difficult to read.
    3. Can't the bullets be more attractive? I'd like to use Ecco style bullets if possible.
    4. Headers can be jumbled together or appear out of alignment with their columns.
Which grid printing did you use ? With what settings ?
1. Both.
2. My html settings are in the screen shot.
Did you require columns ?
1. Yes.
Gantt ?
1. Not yet, but I see the need.
Didn't the WYSIWYG printing do the job correctly ? and why not ?
1. See above.

Oh, and is it possible for the bullets in WYSIWYG and html be positioned on top (as in Ecco) and not the center? It makes it difficult to read an outline when the bullet is centered, and to my taste, appears like sloppy formatting. It would also be wonderful if this could be done on screen in the grid (I have asked for this earlier and you explained that it was a limitation of the grid. You said that you would request this modification from the supplier. Has this ever been addressed?).

I may have missed some issues. If so, I will post again.

Thank you for directing your time and attention to these long standing issues.

Jon

By the way, of the two methods I much prefer WYSIWYG.

Jon

Printing is a huge issue for me, so I'd like to participate here as much as possible:

We go through great lengths in infoqube to get our grids laid out in a very particular way. That includes appearance like cell colors, the way things just look, etc. After doing all that work, it's frustrating when you can't print it out that way. So I'd like a way to be able to print a grid or selection EXACTLY THE WAY IT LOOKS IN THE PROGRAM. Meaning, if I expand some branches and collapse others, if I have a column with a certain width, etc. I'd like to be able to print it that way. And I don't want to have to configure dozens of fields and checkboxes to get it to do that, or have to creat xml templates. I would like a one-click thing to print whatever is laid out on my screen.

As it stands, it's very difficult to print anything that looks decent. I have tried doing it many many different ways. The best is to send it to Excel, modify the appearance there, and then print. But that's a lot of work every time you want to print. I have very nice looking, complex grids that I've put together for work, and I can never print it and show it to people in meetings because all the print options look embarrassing in front of executives (especially compared to how nice and professional it looks in the infoqube application). I usually resort to showing the application data live on a projector because of this.

Now, one trick is to take an image snapshot of a grid. But that's not very good because it's just an image file. You want something that prints to pdf or paper, but the text is still selectable (on pdf) and you can do certain things with fitting margins, etc.

Now, you can make a print dialog that is very complex that gives people many options of what to do. But in the meantime, if you could provide a simple way to print the grid as it is currently displayed, with a few simple options, that would be really great. That way, the user can just edit the grid view and tweak everything there, and once it looks right, he can print it that way without having to ALSO spend a bunch of time tweaking the print options. it's just too much work for simple printing.

Hi supersql (and welcome back to the forum !)

What you described is not fulfilled by the WYSIWYG printing ? It should... What improvements are required ? (print-to-fit ?)

I guess that the problem with the current WYSIWYG printing (using the pdf printer driver) would be that the "text isn't selectable" -- it's like an image, basically.

Printing WYSIWYG to a "printer", but then selecting a pdf printer (like acrobat or whatever) would probably be the best alternative. The only problem is that right now -- IIRC -- icons and other things are a bit messed up.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 3

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU: Intel Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

I just did a test using WISIWYG printing by clicking on the "NO, a true printer" option, but then selecting a pdf printer and it's generally ok, except for the chekboxes. This is a know problem.

My guess though is that it might depend on the the pdf printer (its brand : adobe, PDF exchange). Maybe one works better than others ? I noticed something along these lines in the past.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 3

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU: Intel Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

[quote=Armando]

I guess that the problem with the current WYSIWYG printing (using the pdf printer driver) would be that the "text isn't selectable" -- it's like an image, basically.

[/quote]

that comment was strictly in relation to supersql's comment etc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 3

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU: Intel Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

My main complaint is not a *functional* one...everything works fine in IQ. Meaning, I CAN print something if I really have to.

My main complaint is an *aesthetic* complaint. Purely. When I have a grid set up in the program, it looks very beautiful. I'm proud to show it to people. But when I print it, its ugly and I'm ashamed to show it. That's what I'm talking about. And it takes far too much fiddling to make it look good, and no matter how much fiddling you do, it NEVER looks even close to how nice as the program itself. That's why it would be a great idea if the program could print just like the view on the screen.

Perhaps a visual example will help. Here's what my grid looks like in the program:

OK, now if I print it with the pdf printer, this it what it looks like (of course, you can tweak some stuff, but this is the basic look):

Now, that's pretty good looking, but it's just an image inside a pdf. It's not like you can select the text and work with it.

Then, there's the option to use the HTML printer. It has a lot of options, but the ouput aesthetics is the worst of the three:

As you can see, the layout is spaced poorly, the bullets don't look very good...it just doesn't look nice. Now, you can twiddle with the options a lot (I've spent hours on it), but nothing gets nearly as good as the grid view, or even good enough for me personally.

What you want is the options of the html export dialogue, but with the output aesthetics of the pdf printer. The problem with the pdf printer is you don't have all those options. How can I cram more columns in the width of the page? How can I choose which lines to print, which ones to avoid (print selection?)?

But please understand this is purely aesthetic. I'm not criticizing the functionality of the printing features at all. You've got all the bases covered feature-wise right now, anything more is just nitpicking. It's a matter of making the existing features easy to use and looking as good as it does on the screen. I have the same general comment for the rest of the program. Feature-wise, everything is there, anything more is seriously extremely minor issues compared to focusing on making the existing features more accessible, easier to understand, easier to use, easier to look at, etc.

HTML files don't work well with icons, so this is not the way to go...

I've improved WYSIWYG printing and the generation of an EMF file which you can paste into Excel is very nice. This is not an image file... you can select text from the PDF produced... And use Excel's Print-to-fit so no more fiddling to fit all columns in a page !

Main issue with this solution, is that I had to use expand / collapse bullets with white background (as PDF does not handle well icons with transparent backgrounds).... Otherwise, it is full resolution and text selectable !

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

HTML files don't work well with icons, so this is not the way to go...

[...]

Otherwise, it is full resolution and text selectable !

[/quote]

All this sounds very good to me, Pierre.

I'm not sure of what you mean by that though :

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

Main issue with this solution, is that I had to use expand / collapse bullets with white background (as PDF does not handle well icons with transparent backgrounds)....

[/quote]

Maybe a small screenshot would help. Or actually maybe just trying W6 when it's out...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 3

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU: Intel Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

Are you saying that we need another progaram, this time excel to print, windows somethung for pivot?

[quote=jan_rifkinson]

Are you saying that we need another progaram, this time excel to print, windows somethung for pivot?

[/quote]

No : excel export or printing using excel is another matter. Some users need to export to excel for various needs.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows XP Home Edition, Service pack 3

Dell Vostro 1500, Ram:3gb, CPU: Intel Core2Duo T7500 2.2ghz

No !

I'm saying that it is now very easy to get the content of the grid (WYSIWYG) into the clipboard. So you can paste it in any word processor, presentation software or spreadsheet...

As a bonus, the print-to-fit feature of Excel (and others) can help you fit your printout in exactly the size you want (without having to fiddle with column width...) !

Whew !! OK, Thanks.

In v0.9.25W6, I've significantly improved the grid printing, in 2 ways:

Expand / collapse bullets and checkboxes now print correctly on a PDF printer
An button is added to copy the print to the clipboard (in EMF format). Pasting this in Excel allows "Print to Fit" on 1 or more pages.

HTH !

I've tried the WYSIWYG but I find the image quality not very good - would it be possible to do it as a PNG instead of a JPG?

I personally use export to HTML and print from that - mostly to PDF, so I can give it to others - and I know exactly how it will print.

For my needs it works quite well.

One problem with HTML export:

full line formatting is lost - this can be fairly important in the way I present stuff. Would that be fixable?

[quote=Tom]I've tried the WYSIWYG but I find the image quality not very good - would it be possible to do it as a PNG instead of a JPG?[/quote]

I'm not sure what I was doing last week - I think I converted it to PDF and the PDF printer-driver compressed the jpegs.

This week the quality is fine (I turned off compression when converting).

Strangely, I do get this effect - only in the PDF - so I presume it's a problem with the PDF printer

very odd though, that an image gets corrupted...

I notice there is no way of choosing the print range when printing WYSIWYG from grid. It's either all or nothing (or have I missed it?)

This would be important IMO - especially considering the sometimes unusual layout of the pages

Also, Jon mentioned in another thread:

[quote=Jon][...] choosing the printer involves too many clicks to navigate to.[/quote]

It would certainly be nice if it was easier to change printer

maybe one button for Layout; one for Printer, & one for Print? Must look at how e.g. IE does it...