Gary Martens

I'm using Windows 7. I had version 2.5 of deskPDF Pro, and couldn't get it to work, so I downloaded the current version of deskPDF Std and installed it after uninstalling all other PDF drivers. I knew I wanted a chart of 13.25 x 165 inches, so before even getting into TMG and VCF, I went into deskPDF, set it to Postcript Custom, and set the page size to 13.25 x 165, and exit after saving. I go back into the properties of deskPro and it is reset to 8.5 x 11. When I go into VCF, the Tools->Diagram->Diagram Measurements are set to 13.25 x 184 (not 165) after I make sure that Page Setup is set to Postcript Custom. deskPDF does not save Postcript settings. When I load the previously created chart, it has the dimensions set at 13,25 x 185, but it has the dashed pages makes set as if I want 8.5x11 paper, and when I print the chart, it comes out as 8.5x11 pieces. Poscript Custom just does not work.

Robin: What PDF creator/driver are you using? Gary

The print cut marks are shown whether you have that option turned on or off. If you specify the Postscript Custom size and specify the length of the chart, it simply does not make one long chart, but splits into pieces, with a long white space before the end of each page. Besides the PDF devices I listed in the previous message, also tried CutePDF that someone indicated as a choice. The Fexex Office Print driver may work, but at this point I don't want to spent the money to find out. If you sue that driver as default and print to it, it automatically sends the file to FedEx, and I see no way of previewing the file. The only options are submit for printing, or remove. I'll stick with A0 paper size with the page break lines at 47 inches. Gary

I've been trying various PDF creators/print drivers (PDFcreator, PDF995, Foxit PDF Converter, Soda PDF 2011) and the free PDF creator works as good or better than any of them, I'm creating Descendant charts, PDF files that are 12 to 20" wide and up to 30 feet or longer. When printing the files in VCF, some have suggested using the Postcript Custom Size paper. When doing that, I don't get acceptable results. Even when I specify really long page sizes, when you look at the crezted PDF pages, they are only 3 feet long, with a bunch of white space before the next page. I get the best results by specifying the A0 size paper, which is 33x47 inches. There is also size B0 which is 39.4 x 55.6 inches. The only negative to this way is you end up with a dashed line across the page at the page breaks. Getting large charts printed at FedEx Office (Kinko's) is fairly simple. The only problem is that for some unknown reason, when they look at the charts created using the A0 size, all charts look like 35x56 inches. I note the size of the chart in VCF, and give the people at FedEx Office that size, and they can adjust the output to be that sze.

Virginia: I found another way to get rid of that 71 inches of white space at the bottom of the chart, after I moved everything to the top of the chart, just do a Tools->Diagram->Repaginate and it removes it. After doing some editing to compact things a little, this chart printed nicely on my wide format HP 7000 printer, on 13x19 inch paper. Probably a way Windows 7 handles printers, but I had to have my HP 7000 set as default, then run VCF through TMG, then print the chart. Running VCF by itself continued to default to the PDFcreator, and changing printers in VCF didn't help. Wihtout doing that, all I got was blank pages. This all might be a Windows thing, because I have 5 real printers installed, and 7 other print devices shown. Gary Martens

I had a very strange chart produced by VCF. The chart was a Descendant Chart, Left to Right, on standard size paper, box size of 90 pixels. VCF put the title at the top, with the oldest person partway into the title. Then there was 71 inches of absolutely nothing until you get to the descendants. I moved that one box down about 80 inches, so it's back in front of the descendants, then moved the chart title down. Now there's 70 inches of blank space at the top of the chart. VCF won't let you select and delete that white space, so I selected the whole chart and moved it to the top. I'll have to use a PDF editor to get rid of the white space from 19" to 91" on the chart, unless someone knows a better way of getting rid of it.

Read pages 242 & 243 of Lee Hoffman's book to get some ideas on what has to be done to resize charts and move things around. From that I see that trying to realign children under parents is not the proper way to change the charts, as shown in Figures 14-10 and 14-11 of the book. You need to select and move whole families. 1. Generate the chart for the number of generations you want. 2. Go to File->Page Setup and adjust the paper size to a large size like A0, then change to Landscape. 3. Go to Tools->Diagram->Resize Drawing, and change the width of the drawing. If you initial chart was 10 inches wide, don't make the new size 20 because VCF will resize the boxes, and not add white space to the right side of a Left to Right Chart. 4. The first problem I ran into in doing this with a Left to Right chart was when I tried to move a family where there were 2 wives, each with children, when I tried to move a wife and her children, VCF did a very poor arrangement of the children, lines drawn through other children, and several were left unattached - no line going to them. So I went to a Top to Bottom chart, husband with two wives, tried to move a wife and children down. It moved the group, but I ended up with a set of children in the original place and another set of the same children down where I moved them to. 5. So back to Lee Hoffman's book. You need to use the marguee method to moves groups around, which is selecting people by drawing a box around them with the mouse, like you do in graphics programs to select an area. On a Left to Right chart, the first thing I found was that if the line to a wife comes out the bottom of the husband box, you have to keep it that way. If you try to move the wife to the right of the husband, you end up with a line through the middle of the husband box. Same for Wife with husband below. 6. To unselect an area that you have selected with the mouse, make sure you left click, don't use Ctrl-Z. You can do a Ctrl-Z one time to undo the last move. 7. Depending on how the family is arranged on the chart, you may not be able to select a whole family, but you may have to move just the person at the head of the family first (wife or husband), then the spouse, then the children. In the marquee method, you are drawing a line around the object, and you don't want to include parts of another family in that rectangular selection. 8. I ended up with some strange left over lines that went nowhere. I couldn't select them with the mouse and delete them. Is there a way to get rid of these lines? 9. My conclusion is that I'm going to have to move ahead at least one generation and create a number of charts, because moving things with these extremely large charts just becomes a tangled mess. Gary Martens