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I’m not sure if this
will work, but it may be worth trying. The intent is to be able to print on a
very large “page” (paper size) from MapInfo Pro to a PDF document. Since printing to PDF is often
used as an end in itself (project review, convenient document exchange, etc)
rather than for subsequent printing or plotting, the desire for very large
pages is to be able to see detail and to pan and zoom across the PDF product with
convenience. My aim was to investigate
this for a different disk file format that may (some day, a couple of years
off) have advantages over PDF. It requires that you carefully
follow the logic and the operations, applying it to MapInfo Professional and
the PDF printer driver of your choice (I would assume that the “best”
PDF printer driver available is what you want – but that’s your
choice). Here’s how this
came about, and what I did. While trying to resolve
some problems when printing from Adobe Reader to the new “XML Paper Specification”
(XPS format) used by Microsoft, I was faced with a page size limit of A2 within
the printing interface (which is dictated by Adobe Reader v7.0.7). The printer
driver that I was using is the XPS Document Writer (see below, or later, for details).
The documents I wanted to print were actually larger than A2 size. It is important to
realise that the operation of printing from an application is a combination of how the
‘controlling’ application wants to do it, and how the printer
driver’s settings are configured. In my (test) application environment, a
lot of the control was from Adobe Acrobat Reader – things like
fit-to-page, centring, etc. Acrobat Reader gives a picture of what’s set,
with page size and document size dimensions, but it is still a very fiddly
operation. And once the printer driver is chosen (in my case, the XPS Document
Writer), it also has advanced configuration settings – which is how I am
able to choose a “page size” for the *.XPS disk file of A2 (or
larger, as is described below). The current driver for XPS
preserves colours and vectors, is 600dpi, and seems faithful to the PDF I was
printing from. I am describing disk files of XPS format, which I can view
with an XPS Viewer. It’s
currently experimental (beta2 release) technology. I don’t
know about transparency, since I have been using some downloaded PDF files from
Geoscience Australia (GA) which in 2001 were exported from ArcView versions
with Acrobat Distiller printer driver (they’re about 1 to 5Mb in size). I
haven’t tried printing to XPS disk files from any GIS product, just yet. I
have printed from other applications. In essence, it is
possible to define page sizes (“Forms”) for ALL printers, by using
the Windows Printers and Faxes (Start menu, Settings, Printers and Faxes). The
GA files had page sizes of about 44 inches x 34 inches, so I decided to create a
new Form called 34x44 of that size.
Here’s how (you need to be an Admin) - 1)
open Printers and Faxes 2)
click on the File menu, pick Server
properties 3)
check the Create New Form checkbox,
and set everything you want about the paper size and margins. Then click the Save
Form button, and exit (OK button). Then when you next use a printer,
you should be able to choose that “form” or paper size. I was able to, for the
experimentation that I have been doing with the XPS document format. But I am
not guaranteeing that this will magically give you access to very large “paper
sizes” for the operation of printing to PDF from MapInfo Professional.
Maybe it will – I will be interested in the results that people find. Note that this simple 3-step process
for defining forms is totally independent of XPS and PDF, etc. It is a function
of the Windows operating system (probably Windows 2000 onwards). Cheers Ian Thomas GeoSciSoft - PS - As this doesn’t actually require the XPS
Document Writer or the XPS Viewer, I haven’t complicated things more by
giving further information about them. If it’s of interest, let me know. |
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