While most of this is way over my head, I do have a couple comments:
One problem I have with pdfs in Maptitude, no matter what my pdf print driver
is, is that when using an area layer, I can only use a solid fill in my map.
If you use any type of a shaded fill, the pdf output is horrible, usually a
solid black blob in the pdf document. I'm not sure if this is a pdf bug or a
Maptitude bug. I'm leaning towards Maptitude, as a shaded fill doesn't work
when printing to my plotter (comes out a solid black blob). My point is that I
usually have to either print the map then scan it (losing quality), or cut and
paste into something like PowerPoint.
Secondly, with legends, I don't believe there is one default location for a
legend. For some of my maps the bottom left hand corner works, but for another
map, I may need to see this area, so I locate the legend in a top corner, or
bottom right. I usally do put the legend in a corner though, so maybe there
could be an option to select a particlular corner. In addition, my company
logo is ussually included in my legend, as well as a path name for future
reference.
Thirdly, note that when converting automatic labels to manual, this also
includes any freeway symbols or automatic frames that includes text. Plus,
once you turn automatic labels back on, the manual labels stay, and a whole new
layer of automatic lables is created, again, overlapping the manual labels.
Could get ugly.
Also, a bit off the subject, but I would love it if Maptitude could include a
default (or automatic placement) of a north arrow or direction sysmbol in the
legend. I am always having to do this as a multiple step process, and it just
seems like this could be automated. I realize this might be something GISDK
could do, but it seems like a feature the Maptitude folks could add to the
legend.
Finally, as an editoral perspective, using layouts in Maptitude is clearly
the weakest link in the program. From what I've read, this pdf layering thing
is done automatically in ArcGIS. Caliper needs to incorporate this feature in
a new release as soon as possible, in addition to the numerous bug fixes needed
when working with layouts.
Thanks,
Bob
Josh Rosenthal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Moshe,
1) Agreed on dispensing with the picklist, although, in all honesty, a robust
version of the code should have it, as the goal for any such snippet is to
minimize the effort involved in going from a dataset to the final product, and
having to remove layers from a file has the potential to get repetitive. That
said, I'm all for it not being around for now. Mike, Larry, you've both got
immediate applications for this code. Any thoughts?
2) Interesting, but I suspect we'll need the printer preset for the layout to
work anyway (try seeing what happens when you make a layout with a paper
printer, draw a view, and change the printer to PDF Creator. I always get a
strange shift in map view location to be offcenter, even if the paper size of
my printer matches the size for the PDF printer). Thus, if we can require that
as part of our spec for the user when building a template, and then directly
use the printer from there, this would be ideal.
3) I'm actually not sure why we need to create separate layouts. Can we not
set the map view to our map, and refresh it programmatically, or is there some
other reason I'm missing?
4) I like the solution of the legend as a separate layer. In Acrobat you can
set the layer to always display, or make it part of the base layer, etc.
Should be nice.
4.5) Text & Searchable Text. Sadly, before I had to leave my maptitude/acrobat
setup on friday I didn't have time to explore this completely. Here is what I
have.
One of the great joys of PDFs is that text is searchable, and as such, that
labels, if converted to text, are also searchable. Unfortunately, when
testing, I was unable to get automatic labels into the PDF (this may have been
my system which was in desperate need of a reboot towards the end of the day),
and only could get searchable labels by producing a series of manual labels,
turning off the layer, refreshing the layout (now showing only the labels), and
printing to PDF. This AnnotationLayer PDF, once brought into Acrobat, was
searched when one uses the find function in Acrobat. You will not see this
behaviour in the current Proof of Concept uploaded as that was based on PNGs,
rather than directly being output to PDFs. Note that if someone wants to have
some annotations searchable, and others not searchable (eg: don't search in the
boilerplates), the solution is to have some be images, and others text.
Problems with Searchable Text.
a) Does it work for Automatic labels? If it does, it seriously raises question
if what follows is necessary. I still think it'd be nice, but maybe not
necessary. Certainly for zoom controlled annotations we'll need them in
separate layers. I suppose if it does work, the ideal would be to have a
variable that would say whether or not to separate annotations from layers or
not.
b) In any case, in theory, one wants searchable text to be in its own separate
layer.
Annotations are great, but they can easily hide data. Especially if multiple
layers have annotations.Thus... I guess...
Turn on layer,
show labels
(if necessary?... should be able to spec that if you want a label layer,
create them as part of your base map and have them on, thus, we check to see if
we should create labels by seeing if they're already there),
convert to graphics,
turn off layer,
refresh layout,
print,
delete all graphics in map
turn on layer,
turn off labels (if necessary?),
refresh layout,
print,
turn off layer,
rinse repeat. Every layer (or every layer with labels) would thus get a
separate annotation PDF produced.
c) Acrobat Search pans, not zooms. This is an ugly problem, even in a full
GIS. What should it zoom to? This can be dealt with by using bookmarks in
Acrobat rather than encouraging searching, but this is only a partial solution.
Not a maptitude problem, in any case. A better zooming solution may be the
key. The ideal of course, would be a way to use Acrobat (which does know font
size), to display at font size rather than zooming. Not quite sure how that is
accomplished though.
5) Legends... I'm not quite clear on how determining legend placement will
work. How can it be in a template, if the user cannot have it in a template
because there is no filled map?
I do like the line of thinking with the layout naming scheme and the legend
logic (and layer order placement). Should make potential scripting easier for
the other side of things. Very nice. Also, I'm sure you're right about PDF
Creator, but as you pointed out, Acrobat can do this, and for the moment we are
assuming users will have acrobat handy (although, using iText would allow this
to function without a copy of Acrobat... which would mean Maptitude layered PDF
support using only maptitude and free products).
In any case, very cool.
Thanks a lot,
Josh
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