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RobinL

Narrow fonts and Windows font substitution

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Consider the following:

 

1) Create a Visual Chartform chart from TMG by selecting a narrow or condensed font, like "Industrial", etc

 

2) Save the .VC2.

 

3) Now send it to another TMG user, or a FH chart printing shop.

 

4) When the receiver opens the file they get garbage in the text lines.

 

As seen on the creating computer

post-44-1291243106_thumb.jpg

 

As seen on the viewing computer

post-44-1291243126_thumb.jpg

 

Visual Chartform gives no warning message, nor there is any warning about this in the Help.

 

This is not a Visual Chartform created problem.

 

It is Microsoft Windows "being clever". The problem occurs because on the second computer your chosen narrow font is NOT installed, so Windows serves up its "best guess" as a substitute, typing "Arial" for sans-serif fonts. But font means that the text in a box now wraps. Unfortunately VCF does not recognise this, creating garbled output. On selecting each box that has the problem, VCF redraws it correctly, but in the process this extends the height of that box, creating new problems. The extended height box can overlap the box below and lines attached to the edges of the expanded box may become disfigured or untidy.

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Robin,

 

This seems pretty much like the problem you get any time you use unusual fonts in a highly structured document, then transfer that document to another computer that doesn't have that font installed. For example, try creating a three-panel brochure using unusual fonts in a word processor. Then transfer that document to another computer that doesn't have the same fonts installed - the result is a mess. The only solution is to use a vehicle like PDF which lets you send the fonts with the document.

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Terry,

 

I agree with your summary. I don't whether the Wholly Genes chart printing service has run into this problem or not or whether they constrain users to "standard" fonts.

 

This problem particularly comes from using narrow fonts, but I can see it also occurring when a wide font is substituted by a "standard" less wide font - the boxes may get reduced in height and cause tilted UK style marriage lines to be drawn.

 

The PDF file pathway is OK if the chart is small enough to get a good PDF out. But PDF is much more limited in page size than what can be produced by VCF. Hence some charts cannot be sent as PDF files (with fonts embedded).

 

I put this item up as a warning to users. There are built-in no protections against this happening silently. I have submitted a wish list item asking that "VCF checks that the requested fonts exist on the the machine which trying to open the .VC2 file" and "informs the user of the mismatch".

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This discussion describes the problem I've been having, but I haven't been able to overcome it.

 

I am running TMG 8.08 on a Windows 8.1 laptop. My old printer that supports tabloid format runs only under Windows XP, so I have installed TMG 8.08 (no data) on an XP desktop in order to print from Visual Chartform. When I transfer the descendant box chart files to the XP computer, it renders in VCF as in the examples above, i.e. boxes in different positions and smaller sizes so that the text doesn't fit properly.

 

However, I created the charts in Arial font, both Regular and Arial Narrow, so there should be no difference in how Windows renders them, since these fonts should be the same in all Windows versions. I also ported all of the Windows 8.1 fonts to the XP machine and installed them. When that made no difference, I uninstalled all of the Arial fonts and reinstalled them from the imported Windows 8.1 font files. Again, there was no difference.

 

Any ideas on what else I could try? Thanks for the help.

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Could you print to a pseudo printer like PDF 995, Bullzip, PDF Creator - and take that pdf file to the other computer? There are instructions in the forum for printing to a PDF printer (see pinned message at top of this forum).

 

Virginia

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There are 2 likely causes to this kind of problem.

 

1) If you select unusual fonts then you must ensure that both computers creating and viewing have those fonts installed.

 

2) You also get this kind of problem if one computer is using a different screen DPI value from the other. (default 96).

 

RobinL

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