printing of diagrams, v5 versus v4

[rondesgr]

Last week, when I used Flowcode4 and printed a current project, the flow diagrams would fit within the width of page (I use 11 x 17 paper in portrait mode). Is there any way to get Flowcode5 to do the same?

Today, when I printed that same project from Flowcode5, the diagram overflowed the limits of the first page's width, and ended up printing onto a second page. I tried adjusting the scaling property of my printer through the "Print Setup" option in the Flowcode menu, but that had no effect on the printout.

I am using Windows 7 32-bit professional.

Thank you for your help,
Ron

[Steve]

Have you tried printing diagrams using the "project documentation" feature of Flowcode? This may give you more control when printing projects and images.

[rondesgr]

Hello Steve,

I just looked through the Flowcode help for "project documentation", but didn't turn up anything. I did find an export Wizard under "create project report" menu option. Is this what you are referring to?

Thanks,
Ron

[rondesgr]

Hello Steve,

I've got a handle on your "Project Documentation", which turned out to be "Create Project Report" in the menu. I used Firefox to preview that generated HTML, and then print the file. I discovered that Firefox 9.0.1 has printing issues (such as cutting of portions of the code longer than the 17 inches, unless I shrink the images down to 50%). But I'm making progress.

The Flowcode help file is rather sparse concerning this project report feature. What does the "show" option do (located in the "Create Project Report" window)?

Thanks,
Ron

[JonnyW]

Hello. Sorry to hear of your printing troubles - we haven't changed much in terms of the printing from v4 to v5, but have changed the rendering of the flowcharts considerably so this is something we can look at.

You should be able to zoom out of the flowcharts to make them fit a page, does this not work? I'm trying to remember the code behind the print preview and I think it did cater for multiple page-width flowcharts in v4, so maybe its just the zoom size that's set wrong?

The project report can document the project in a variety of ways, and the installed styles available can be selected through the menu. The 'Show' checkbox will show the report in your browser once it is saved, this saves having to navigate to this in explorer to load it after it is saved.This was quite a late addition so maybe has not made it into the help file.

Unfortunately exporting as HTML is at the mercy of the browser, but HTML was chosen as this can be viewed in a wide range of applications, such as Word, Firefox, etc.

I hope this is useful.

Jonny

[rondesgr]

Hello Jonny,

I agree that using the HTML format gives us a wide range of applications that can read and print the flow diagrams. However, I have uncovered an oddity with the generated gif files (and perhaps with Windows7). If I use Microsoft Paint to view a gif created by the project report, and zoom a long flow diagram so that the width of the image matches the width of my 11 by 17 paper (in portrait mode setting), naturally, the height of image extends to 2nd page of 11x17. Unfortunately, only the first page shows in the print preview and gets printed. I noticed this same effect when printing from Firefox 9.0. (I tried using Chrome, but it is just an overall pain to work with when you want to control how a document is printed.) Have your team noticed this?

By the way, does the 'Show' option in the export wizard refer to showing the generated HTML in a browser? If so, it would be helpful if that check box was labeled as such. Especially since there is hardly any mention of the "create project report" in the Flowcode help file.

Thank you for an otherwise great product,
Ron

[JonnyW]

Hi. I will have a look at this today. I'm not sure what we can do about the quirks of MS Paint or Firefox (if all you want to do is print an image, Flowcode allows images to be saved separately as jpeg, gif, png, bmp). We originally wanted the export to be available as PDF as this is a WYSIWYG format but unfortunately time constraints prevented this. It is on the to-do list for the next major release, or maybe before this, and if possible I will try to get in features that allow the control of the X/Y sizes to be customized in more detail.

On testing, it seems that zooming out of your flowchart before clicking Print Preview (or Print) will scale the flowchart down in the print, so maybe this is a solution for you to fit to a single page?

As an aside, for the 'Show' text, yes, I agree 'Show in browser' would have been better. Unfortunately this feature was added late on - after all our text had been translated into 20+ languages. At the point this was added we could not get 'Show in browser' translated into all the Flowcode languages, but we already had 'Show' translated, so put this in with a note to get it changed at the first opportunity.

One thought - you mention that Flowcode v4 prints out on a single page but v5 does not. Does v4 scale the flowchart to fit, whatever its size? If so, this is a bug in v5, but it is probably more likely that in v5 the flowcharts take up slightly more space, especially in the X direction as the annotations can show the full text, as can descriptions. You could try hiding the annotations in Menu->View->Global Options...->Annotations, or try changing the graphics style to something more compact in Menu->View->Global Options...->Flowchart (Icon graphics style). If the style of the chart is not an issue, I might suggest the 'Window boxes' style, as this is quite compact. If you would prefer more of a v4 look, this is an option too, though it is not identical.

Cheers,

Jonny

[medelec35]

Hi Ron,
Here is something to try which may or may not work for you?

In Flowcode when macro your intresed in is shown e.g Main, use Save image, Save as JPEG...

Load the JPEG in paint (at this point will look huge)

Then in paint, select print Page set up
Select Select Fit to: 1 by 1 page(s) within the scaling section.

When you select OK, no matter how big the flowchart, then the whole lot will appear on the one page only.
Then use Print from within Paint.

Since the flowchart is scaled down, then it was taking a large area to start with then, as Jonny said:

it is probably more likely that in v5 the flowcharts take up slightly more space, especially in the X direction as the annotations can show the full text, as can descriptions. You could try hiding the annotations in Menu->View->Global Options...->Annotations, or try changing the graphics style to something more compact in Menu->View->Global Options...->Flowchart (Icon graphics style).

Martin

[rondesgr]

Hello Jonny and Martin,

At the moment, I've been moved on to another crisis project. However, I will work with your excellent suggestions at the beginning of next week, and will post my results as soon as I can.

Thank you very much for all of your help,
Ron

[medelec35]

No problem bud,
hope a solution works for you.

@Jonny,
sorry just re read your post and looks like I was repeating a bit of what you said. Did not mean to

@Ron If you do decide to give thanks then since what I though was my idea, Johnny had covered, then please give him the thanks and not me.

[JonnyW]

Ha ha - no probs Martin, I think I'll live. If you like, we can share credit then everyone's happy!