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Submitted by Jibz on 2010/05/12 03:17

I was trying to use the Print Preview->WYSIWYG printing of the complete grid dialog and made some observations.

The preview window always opens a tiny window showing a full page at an illegible 18%. It would be nice if it remembered it's size and position.

There does not appear to be any way to change printer options, it always prints to the default printer using the default settings. I have a print to pdf driver installed that I wanted to use, but it went to my default inkjet. The Print button should show a standard print dialog.

If a field in the grid being shows is wider than the page it will insert a blank page. Maybe it would be possible to add some kind of optional auto-scaling to the dialog?

Or it might be better to avoid this preview dialog all together and always export to html and use the much nicer html print preview dialog?

Comments

hi Jibz

1) The preview window always opens a tiny window showing a full page at an illegible 18%. It would be nice if it remembered it's size and position.

This is not the case here - also it remembers it's settings here - if I change it to full width it remembers (even if I dont go ahead with the print). I wonder why it's different in yours...

? Anyone else having problems that way ?

2) There does not appear to be any way to change printer options, it always prints to the default printer using the default settings. I have a print to pdf driver installed that I wanted to use, but it went to my default inkjet.

Not intuitive, but you can under 'Page Setup' (the rulers icon)

3) The Print button should show a standard print dialog.

Agreed

4) If a field in the grid being shows is wider than the page it will insert a blank page. Maybe it would be possible to add some kind of optional auto-scaling to the dialog?

A completely blank page? or a mostly blank one showing the bit of the field that doesnt fit in page one?

An optional "Wrap text in fileds" would be nice.

5) it might be better to avoid this preview dialog all together and always export to html and use the much nicer html print preview dialog?

or throw it out there as a suggestion when the print preview shows (explaining advantages of the html)

I dont print often but find both options good - straight grid print is great for sticking on the wall where it doesnt matter that it spans two pages

[quote=Tom]This is not the case here - also it remembers it's settings here - if I change it to full width it remembers (even if I dont go ahead with the print). I wonder why it's different in yours...

? Anyone else having problems that way ?[/quote]

I wonder if it could be because I am using the portable version? It seems to remember the rest of my windows positions fine.

[quote=Tom]2) There does not appear to be any way to change printer options, it always prints to the default printer using the default settings. I have a print to pdf driver installed that I wanted to use, but it went to my default inkjet.

Not intuitive, but you can under 'Page Setup' (the rulers icon)[/quote]

Thanks

[quote=Jibz]

? Anyone else having problems that way ?[/quote]

I wonder if it could be because I am using the portable version? It seems to remember the rest of my windows positions fine.

[/quote]

No, I using portable mode too...

From 'about':

Version 0.9.25Pre-Rel23 build 2010-04-07 01:35:34
Running in Portable mode

Using XP SP2 Home

[quote=Tom]4) If a field in the grid being shows is wider than the page it will insert a blank page. Maybe it would be possible to add some kind of optional auto-scaling to the dialog?

A completely blank page? or a mostly blank one showing the bit of the field that doesnt fit in page one?

An optional "Wrap text in fileds" would be nice.

[/quote]

Since it's WYSIWYG, "Wrap text" seems wrong to me.

Auto scaling would be a much better option, if possible.

And if it doesn't fit the page the are 2 other options :

1- remove a few columns in the grid

2- use the HTML export to print were you have many possible configuration -- and it's not as hard as it looks like :

a- select your items,

b- select your columns

c- select export to HTML,

d- select your various options and export it. (These will be recorded by IQ for the next time you need to export stuff)

e- If the result doesn't suit you, do the export again (the dialog remains open, so it's easy to just change a few option and export again.

[quote]

3) The Print button should show a standard print dialog.

Agreed

[/quote]

In IQ, you click the "Adjust" Button, then "printer"... Not that bad.

While I agree that the "standard print dialog" might probably be better, note that what you call the "standard print dialog" is not that standard when you click "print". In MS Word (2003 at least, which is still the standard word processor in many enterprises), the "print" button in the print preview dialog just.... prints. If you need to adjust parameters, you have to go through the other "Print" option in the File menu...

In any case, I find that this is really a detail. I never had any problem finding where to change the printer settings...

For me, the main problem is toh ave my grids fit in the page, so a scale option would be good. (And the bullets appear as weird black squares, but there's already a mantis issue I entered for this a few weeks ago.)

[quote=Armando]

[/quote]

It looks like the printing might come from the gantt component, so perhaps Pierre might want to comment how flexible it is.

[quote=Tom]

1) The preview window always opens a tiny window showing a full page at an illegible 18%. It would be nice if it remembered it's size and position.

This is not the case here - also it remembers it's settings here - if I change it to full width it remembers (even if I dont go ahead with the print). I wonder why it's different in yours...

? Anyone else having problems that way ?

[/quote]

Here, it doesn't remember any setting in between IQ sessions. And I must say that the printing is quite ugly with the big black squares. Anybody else gets big black squares as bullets ?

I have, in general, found printing to be quite a frustrating challenge. I was beginning to think I was the only one out here with this dilema. For starters, nothing seems intuitive about the process, at least for me and relative to other windows program print processes. I too have had considerable trouble fitting print jobs onto a single page, in most instances I haven't actually figured out how to do it, and I don't consider deleting columns in order to fit the print job to be an acceptable solution. I'm finally down to using a screen capture utility and printing from that - I can rescale any which way I want and so for me it's become the quickest and simplest way to print from IQ.

Doug Bartlett

[quote=d bartlett]

Doug Bartlett

[/quote]

I almost never print myself, but I do need to export, and yes, it's not a quick task. I might be quicker the 3rd time one prints the same grid configuration, but the first time... Better not do it 5 minutes before the deadline. ;)

I've read many times from different users that they didn't like how the printing was handled in IQ... last time was 2-3 weeks ago when I worked on a DB to take minutes.Doug : I really wonder how you can work with a screen capture utility to print though... That must be really cumbersome. I think I'd still prefer the WYSIWYG interface. At least the text from a "printed" pdf file can be searched, copied and pasted, etc.

In any case, I'm sure you'll agree that if one has 20 columns in a grid, it might be difficult to make them fit in a page... Whatever the program you're using -- IQ, excel, ms word...

I would be good if you could state what's unintuitive about the process. Not that disagree, but it would help to isolate all non intuitive aspects and make them better.

Using the export to HTML option, you can pretty much configure things the way you want, but you need to play with it a bit to find what works for you. Once it's done though, it's done -- unless you need something different for another grid.

So I'd say that 3 "relatively important" things are missing from the HTML export which already works pretty well I must say:

1- being able to save and name different configurations for HTML export (very important ! It's a drag to have to go through all options again when another types of formatting are necessary for other grids.)

2- Export icons (right now the icon text, HTML tags, appear)

3- to be able to modify the indentation for each level of the outline (so that it can be wider or smaller)

A few things are missing from the WYSIWYG printing :

1- IQ should remember last config (it doesn't)

2- As an option, grids should be shrinked to fit the page (other wise one has to remove columns or accept that grids will be split to fit on different pages)

3- checked squares and black square bullets should be refined as they are quite ugly at this point.

4- Maybe should a standard "print" dialog when "print " is selected in hte print preview.

a direct export to MS Word (without 10s of empty columns at the right end of the "grid/table") would be good too... But if the HTML and WYSIWYG printing could be improved/fixed, I'm sure it would already be pretty good.

Conclusion ? Printing is far from ideal and needs to be improved so that no user should find that it's hard to print a grid's content (or that the process is weird).

How can I print this grid view (NIC the top menus) to 1, and only 1 page, and also export it to a 1 page pdf - for the life of me I cannot figure out how to do either ??? Also, notice the gibbled Gnatt Overview across the top. Doug

If you reduce the width of the Item column and select the visible part (Gantt print option), in landscape, it should fit in 1 page

I'm looking into the Overview bug. It seems the grid manufacturer changed the way it is behaving:

Old way: Range equals whole Gantt range
New way: Range equals visible Gantt range

IMHO, it is not as useful as before. Will contact to see what's scoop...

Have substantially reduced width of Item column, as per below, but still will not fit to 1 page. I select WYSIWYG printing of the complete grid with a Gantt Print Option six month date range and still get a 2 page print preview. If I select Gantt Visible Range I get 3 pages. NOTE also that Print Preview is displaying columns hidden behind the Gantt column, I don't want that, I want WYSIWYG. thanks, Doug

Hi Doug,

In all applications, WYSIWYG also includes stuff "behind" scroll bars. Only a screen capture gives you exactly the same thing as the screen

So you can :

hide unwanted columns
Print only the useful Gantt range (seems to be Feb-March). Gantt Full Range print option does this for you, or
Change the Gantt Scale to Month. Note that you can use the new Inside Zoom feature to zoom a specific area of the Gantt

Slightly off topic : @Pierre : is it me or does the print preview always changes the default printer to something else than what I set as default printer ? I tried to set a pdf printer as the default one (in "printer and faxes" in Windows), and IQ always reverts back to my Samsung. I tried everything. All other apps respect my default printer choice (pdf printer) and don't revert to my samsung...

>the print preview always changes the default printer to something else

Confirmed and fixed in v0.9.25M

Thanks!