Bill, maps and text: have been trying to 'get this right' with one of my products for years. If you do not have a wordprocessing package available to 'assemble' your maps/ text then your best bet is to use a non earth registered 'raster' conversion of your boilerplate text as an image on your layouts (but be prepared for comments about clarity/fuzzines etc..i found it took quite a while to get a good image output.(i think it is a pixel averaging thing to do with layout scaling and print scaling). simple fonts are the best (like arial), if you get the text set up correctly you can do some fab stuff this way (like have the map sitting within the text etc etc) but make sure you do a good proof read (one of my tools has been writing Snadstone instead of sandstone for years.) Placing text on a layout even remotely like a WP is a nightmare (even following your advice from several years ago!) so i'd guess 1000 words would be a 'challenge'.
if you do have a wordprocessor available then you can have an integrated solution, my own (dominantly mapbasic) kit generates RTF files and map snapshots which are then assembled within word before being encaspulated within a word template (which carries all the boilerplate / shark avoidance text) this is all fairly easy using DDE (for oldies like me) or ole (if you want it to work!). Depending upon the time you have available you should be able to mb-code routines for writing paragraphs, titles, bulleted, tabulated and csv text, headers and footers with bold/italic and colours etc.. Use Mapinfo to make the 'components', use a small VB app to start word, stitch the components together and perform the print. The main drawback i have found with using this route is that pagination is problematic with maps and variable length text, the main advantage is that you can make the tool fairly flexible about what it reports (end users can edit if they wish too) hth r -----Original Message----- From: Bill Thoen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 07 October 2004 21:50 To: MapInfo-L Subject: MI-L Printing Text Documents with MapInfo I've got to modify an MBX application to print a page of legal fineprint following the output of one to many maps. The maps are easy, but how do you produce a neatly-formatted page of text? This page has about 1000 words of boilerplate text and I've got to add some run-time generated summary text as well. The output goes directly to the printer on the client machines, and I can't assume they have MS Word, Adobe PDF, or even a web browser. The only thing I can think of is to paste the boilerplate text into a layout window, line by line (because strings can't be longer than 255 chars), and then save it as a workspace. At run time, I could then open this layout, drop in my additional text at the top of the page, and print the page. But the prospect of manually laying out the fixed text seems a bit daunting. Does anyone know if there is a better way, or a tool that can move a Word document into a frame that could be dropped on a layout? - Bill Thoen --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 13640 ********************************************************************* This e-mail message, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential and intended solely for the use of the addressee. However, the information contained in this e-mail may subsequently be subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and, unless the information is legally exempt from disclosure, the confidentiality of this e-mail and your reply cannot be guaranteed. If this message was not addressed to you, you have received it in error and any copying, distribution or other use of any part of it is strictly prohibited. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the sender and do not necessarily represent those of the British Geological Survey. The security of e-mail communication cannot be guaranteed and the BGS accepts no liability for claims arising as a result of the use of this medium to transmit messages from or to the BGS. http://www.bgs.ac.uk ********************************************************************* --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 13653
