paragraph border wrong when in table (PDF publish)

[Wolfgang Baer]

The question is difficult to explain in words.
I have a paragraph style with an active border on the left side.
This works well in chm output. Either if the paragraph is in a table or "stand alone" on the page the border is correctly drawn.

But if I publish to PDF it does not work as expected. If the paragraph is in a table its visibility depends on the zoom setting of the PDF viewer. Foxit Reader shows the border only at some zoom settings (but as very thin line), Acrobat does not show the border at all.

I tried with different "reference devices" (Foxit PDF creator, XPS and screen). Result is always the same.

Is there a way to solve this?

[Tim Green]

Hi Wolfgang,

I can't reproduce this anywhere. It works fine, no matter what I do. Please mail me a small demo project and your .mnl PDF template at support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we'll check it for you.

I tried with different "reference devices" (Foxit PDF creator, XPS and screen).

Don't use PDF printer drivers as reference devices for Help & Manual's PDF output. The XPS Document Writer is the only driver of this type you can use like this. Normally, you should use a normal printer driver -- never ever a PDF output driver.

[julio]

I have noticed that, when defining a border for a paragraph and selecting a real printer as a reference device, it all works fine, except for a small glitch on the right border, as you can see on the next figures:

paragraph_left_border.png

paragraph_right_border.png

The upper and lower borders slightly exceed the right border. This is not a big deal, these images were captured with a 600% zoom, but there is definitely room for improvements here.

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Julio,

These are rounding effects. Set a higher default print quality for the reference printer. 600dpi is good for PDF.

regards,

Martin.

[julio]

Hi Julio,

These are rounding effects. Set a higher default print quality for the reference printer. 600dpi is good for PDF.

regards,

Martin.

The printer is at 600 dpi and apparently there is no visible glitch on the right border when on paper. I could try to change paragraph's width until I find the perfect width to eliminate these rounding effects, but that would be a never-ending job, because any small change would ruin everything (margin, paper size, etc.).
But thanks for pointing out these rounding issues.

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Julio,

You could try setting higher resolution for the default printer, e.g. photo printing. This usually improves the PDF. The downside is you need to remember to change it back before using it for normal printing.

You don't need to use a physical printer as the H&M reference. You could install a driver for any printer as the reference, which lets you experiment without upsetting your normal printing.

regards,

Martin.