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I frequently need to rescale a chart that perhaps just runs over a page boundary, or to get a big chart onto a smaller piece of paper. But VC handles scaling erratically and illogically.

 

If, for instance, I have a chart that runs across 4x4 pages and I want to reduce it to 1x1, I choose Tools|Diagram|Resize Drawing, enter a new width or height (direction-horizontal or direction-vertical in terms of the dialog) and yes, the drawing resizes, but the interconnecting lines and the boxes do strange things.

 

Sometimes the lines overlap the boxes, they end up with strange kinks (or double kinks) in them for no obvious reason, and the text, boxes and distances don't scale at the same rate, so that the text (while perfectly readable) overlaps the boxes.

 

I would expect a "resize" function to do nothing but simply rescale everything exactly the same amount, so that what gets printed is simply a smaller version of the original, rather than something that looks very different.

 

And it's not just with a big "resize", but even doing a small one just to fit a slightly oversised chart onto a page results in unpredictable behaviour.

 

So my conclusion is that this is not the way to make a drawing fit on a page. So what is?

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Robin is the expert on working with Charts, and he may have some suggestions for you. If it is a question of a small resizing, does your printer have an option to fit the image to the paper size?

 

I make a lot of small charts - and rather than using Resize - manually rearrange the components to fit. After I make the chart I use Printer setup to experiment with the best fit: letter or legal sized paper, landscape or portrait. Once that is determined, I rearrange the components to avoid page breaks, usually limiting the charts to two or three 8.5x11 pages, joining them either on the long or short side - depending on the layout.

 

For a chart that does not lend itself to easy rearranging, I am experimenting with breaking it up into color-coded components (see the screenshots below). The first page has the first 3 generations; the subsequent pages are continuing individual charts - each starting with the 3rd generation - copied and pasted onto a single page.

 

My charts are made to slip into the front pocket of the 3-ring binders that I use to share genealogical data with family members. I include in the binders a brief overview of the family history, bios of interesting people, family group sheets and copies of important documents.

 

I print the charts on cardstock and join the pages on the back with self-adhesive linen hinging tape (from an artist supply or book-repair source). It makes an almost invisible seam on the front and holds up to repeated foldings.

 

Virginia

 

W1.gif W2.gif W3.gif

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Thanks.

 

Yes, my various printers can "fit to page", but TMG still tries to "tile" the output and it doesn't work.

 

I'm aware of the fact that I can adjust the charts manually, but that somehow defeats the object of having an automated process, and needs to be done each time there's a change in the data, or each time I want to produce a different "view" of my data.

 

I've even tried printing the chart to a "big page" PDF, and then importing that into one of my PDF programs. But the PDF that TMG produces doesn't scale at all well (I haven't had time to analyse the code to see why).

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Sometimes the lines overlap the boxes, they end up with strange kinks (or double kinks) in them for no obvious reason, and the text, boxes and distances don't scale at the same rate, so that the text (while perfectly readable) overlaps the boxes.

 

Gotty,

 

I seldom do this as I can choose the appropriate size of paper to correspond to the generated (or reshaped ) chart.

 

However, it is a long time (many versions of VCF) since I last tried. Using TMG v6.12, I could not get the effect you are describing. I tried both a small chart (from the sample project) or a larger complex reshaped chart reducing each to about 40% of normal size. All changes acted as one would expect even if the result was not practical to use because of the small effective font size. I then tried 25% with no obvious corruption.

 

So we need more information.

- Which type of chart - descendant, ancestor, or hourglass box or fan chart?

- Which orientation of chart (top-to-bottom, etc)?

- Does the chart have images in the boxes?

If descendant or hourglass,

- Are you using US or UK style of Marriage lines?.

 

Ideally, can you take a screen grab of a small portion that you see as corrupted and attach it to your reply?

 

It sounds like there are 2 types of problem:

- the text size has not been adjusted correctly

- the path of some connection lines is not appropriate.

 

post-44-1172269311_thumb.png (from edit screen - not print preview - as the print preview will not zoom in far enough to give a good screen grab!)

 

In this example, from the sample project, I do see a scaling issue. Observe that the scaling has meant that the descenders of the previous line's character are overlayed by the top of the next lines characters and that the descenders of the bottom line are truncated by the box boundary.

 

Before I report this, I would like more information about the other effects that you are seeing.

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I have a 13 generation ancestral chart (only one line goes back that far, the others go back only 7 generations) which wants to print across 3x2 sheets of A3 paper. For research planning purposes I want to put this onto a single A3 sheet (I never incorporate pictures in my charts) so I "resize drawing" to fit 39cm width.

 

I've attached two sample images, one is from the chart as generated by default, the second is what happened after reducing by 33% (it's by no means the worst example, but it shows the four mis-scaling effects best ... font scaling clipping the glyph bounding boxes (line spacing isn't being adjusted in proportion), failure of the boxes to scale correctly (the h/w ratio ought to remain the same through the scaling), failure of the text to fit in the box and the weird connecting lines.

 

The same effects can be observed even on simple charts in various formats.

 

post-1478-1172360310_thumb.pngpost-1478-1172360320_thumb.png

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Gotty,

 

I can confirm what you are seeing - there is a series of bugs in the scaling of the chart that distort the chart if the scaling size reduction is considerable e.g. reducing the chart down to 1/3 of its generated size. This effect can be seem in the sample project using the Ancestor Box Chart of Lula Elizabetth Alexander (with ancestor siblings checked). Then reducing the width from 922mm to 317mm.

 

In the scaled chart

(1) The scaled font size is incorrect. (if you look at the proerties of a line of text in a chart after you have scaled it compared with before scaling the chart, then the font size goes UP and not down. In the example quoted above, the original 12pt font for names became 36pt, and the data lines at 8pt became 20pt. - Very strange.

(2) The line spacing within a box causes text to overlap over text and the outline of the box.

(3) The floating "connection ports" that control the position of the within and between generation lines are not correctly placed. This causes strange kinks in the lines and causes lines to pass over over boxes.

 

I will report this.

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