Image scale onscreen and pdf

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John Johann
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Joined: Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:35 pm

Image scale onscreen and pdf

Unread post by John Johann »

Hi,
What is best practice for working with images for on-screen help and pdf manuals?

The image scale setting "%of page width, maximum is physical size" works well on screen. Is there another option somewhere to set for pdf or do I have to duplicate images and put a condition around them?

Thanks
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Tim Green
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Re: Image scale onscreen and pdf

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi John,
The image scale setting "%of page width, maximum is physical size" works well on screen.
This also works for PDF. What problem are you experiencing with that there?
Is there another option somewhere to set for pdf or do I have to duplicate images and put a condition around them?

You can't currently have different image settings for screen and print as you can for text styles (although that would be a good idea). If the images do need to be radically different you need to use two different ones with conditions. :?
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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John Johann
Posts: 305
Joined: Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:35 pm

Re: Image scale onscreen and pdf

Unread post by John Johann »

Probably more a user issue (still testing) -- setting "% of page width, maximum is physical size" to 80% meant that 2 images which were side by side on screen could be on two lines in the pdf.

Also, images which are quite large are sometimes shown at the 80% in the PDF with a black rectangle around them.

80% "of physical size" appears to allow those over the pdf page width to be scaled to max pdf width, if appropriate.
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Tim Green
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Re: Image scale onscreen and pdf

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi John,

In PDF you are constrained by the page dimensions, which are absolute -- a PDF is still really just printer output in a file. In order to prevent layouts from breaking, Help+Manual will do everything it can to fit your content into the PDF margins. Multiple images that won't fit will be shifted to 2 lines, and single images that won't fit will be scaled automatically.

Also note that "% of page size" actually means "% of container size". If the image is in a table cell then the % refers to the table cell, not the page, minus padding.

Tables are also an important element in relation to PDF layout. Help+Manual uses HTML-style fluid tables, not Word-style static tables. For a table to fit on a PDF page it must either be narrower than the absolute width of the page, or it must have one or more columns with variable width and variable content (i.e. only flowing body text) that can adjust enough to allow the table to fit on the page. If the table doesn't fit, Help+Manual sets ALL the columns to variable width, and the results are rarely what you want... 8) See here for details on this:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/index ... widths.htm
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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