Folks, Some Things Just Will Not Print

[tad]

Greetings All,,,,Well, instead of wondering *where the black went*, now I am wondering where the IMAGE went.....After printing a traced bitmap, I noticed that part was missing...After a bit of poking around I discovered that it was sort of a *background* shape and I isolated it......It was only one of 4851 shapes, but IT WILL NOT PRINT .....
Tried some tricks....different printer drivers.....changing *PrintMask value* in the Registry....even put an outline on it and rotated to Portrait mode (an old Corel 4 move)....still no luck. SO:

Sent the file to Gary, Sean, and Xara Tech Support......Gary said it crashed XaraX Beta7,,,,Sean got it to print, but only by (cleverly) dividing it into two shapes,,,,,,Have not heard from tech support. They probably are busy with something .....special.

Guess it has TOO MANY NODES .....Wow ! How many is that, and how do we count them ???
The workaround is pretty clear----Export as bitmap -----But still,........ WHY ???
Of course, as one wise forum member said *You may think you are dealing with vectors, but it is a bitmap when it hits the page.*...True,,,still....
I am hoping that since former Xara programmers are On The Loose our forum may get a few doses of enlightenment....In fact,,justin_flude's suggestion that we look at the .ini & registry settings is a great idea..That should give us plenty to discuss until Godot gets here.
Regards,,,,,,,,,,Tad
I have attached the file if anyone wishes to experiment with failure . [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[This message was edited by Tad Bridenthal on August 24, 2000 at 11:57 PM.]

[tad]

Greetings All,,,,Well, instead of wondering *where the black went*, now I am wondering where the IMAGE went.....After printing a traced bitmap, I noticed that part was missing...After a bit of poking around I discovered that it was sort of a *background* shape and I isolated it......It was only one of 4851 shapes, but IT WILL NOT PRINT .....
Tried some tricks....different printer drivers.....changing *PrintMask value* in the Registry....even put an outline on it and rotated to Portrait mode (an old Corel 4 move)....still no luck. SO:

Sent the file to Gary, Sean, and Xara Tech Support......Gary said it crashed XaraX Beta7,,,,Sean got it to print, but only by (cleverly) dividing it into two shapes,,,,,,Have not heard from tech support. They probably are busy with something .....special.

Guess it has TOO MANY NODES .....Wow ! How many is that, and how do we count them ???
The workaround is pretty clear----Export as bitmap -----But still,........ WHY ???
Of course, as one wise forum member said *You may think you are dealing with vectors, but it is a bitmap when it hits the page.*...True,,,still....
I am hoping that since former Xara programmers are On The Loose our forum may get a few doses of enlightenment....In fact,,justin_flude's suggestion that we look at the .ini & registry settings is a great idea..That should give us plenty to discuss until Godot gets here.
Regards,,,,,,,,,,Tad
I have attached the file if anyone wishes to experiment with failure . [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[This message was edited by Tad Bridenthal on August 24, 2000 at 11:57 PM.]

[diniel]

Well, I tried printing this shape on my laser printer (Brother HL-1250 with 36MB RAM). I got nothing. Absolutely nothing - a blank sheet of paper.

If I select File -> Print -> Options -> Output -> Bitmap (or Anti-Alias Bitmap), it prints no problem.

I'm not really technical enough to know if printing as a bitmap is good or bad, but all I know is it usually looks the same, and I have to do it quite often - especially when printing posters or advert layouts on full A4 size prints with lots of fills and shapes. If I don't, often bits are missed out (like shapes will print with outlines and no fill, or just not at all).

I'm sure there's a reason, I don't know what, but printing as a bitmap like this always works for me - hopefully it will for you too !

Daniel

[preid]

Hey Tad
I had no problem printing it. Printed as postscript level 1 in colour (LaserJet 4500DN) and B/W (LaserJet 5000N).
And yep, lots and lots of nodes!
Phil

[Sean Sedwards]

When Xara prints to a PostScript printer, it generates an intermediate PS file. When Xara prints to a non-PS printer, the intermediate file is an .emf (an upgraded .wmf), even on Win9x. Although PostScript files are inefficient because everything is written out in readable text, the information within them is in a fairly efficient form (ellipses, lines, arcs, Beziers, fills etc.) and is probably quite similar to how Xara stores the drawing internally. By contrast, Xara's metafiles, although binary, are extremely inefficient and can contain a 100 times as many nodes as are strictly necessary (possibly more). Hence, Xara chokes printing to non-PS printers when the shapes already have very large numbers of nodes.

Using File > Print Options > Output > Print As > Bitmap or Anti-aliased bitmap is a good workaround, as Daniel suggests. While you're there, make sure the Transparency / Bitmap resolution is equal to your printer's maximum resolution or an integer fraction thereof (also important for PS printers). On my installation, the so-called Automatic setting just defaults to 150 dpi, regardless of the printer chosen. The maximum you can set is 600 dpi, which is fine for HP, but Epson printers might give better results at 480 dpi. I have a nominally 600 dpi HP DeskJet that gives slightly better results when 'Bitmap resolution' is set to 300 dpi, so some experimentation may be necessary.

Regards - Sean

[Mike Bailey]

I had a peek at your object, I must say Xara is doing an exceptional job just displaying this object with a fill color, all I can see is that you have many overlaps of the same fill, when I changed the fill color it remains a shade of gray, there are so many errors in the way it is drawn it would take a lot of work to fix, I think do as suggested and Convert the object to bitmap.

[This message was edited by Mike Bailey on August 25, 2000 at 08:55 AM.]

[diniel]

I could change the fill colour just as normal, by selecting the object and clicking a colour in the colour bar.

I think it's just a shape with lots of nodes around the outside - if you turn down the display quality you can see there's nothing in the middle.

I changed the fill to rainbow and the line to orange -- there was a tiny delay compared to changing the fill/line of a normal "simple" shape, but nothing spectacularly slow (half a second on my Thunderbird 850 / 256 MB RAM) (attached).

Tad, what is the shape? It looks like a bitmap trace of a scan of a leaked blot of ink from a broken inkjet printer cartridge as it fed the paper through !

[Mike Bailey]

Yes Daniel, I downloaded the file again and was able to change the color, I don't know what happened the first time? I tried exporting the file as eps and cmx to see what happens, eps exported and opened in Draw but I got an eps pattern instead of a solid fill, cmx opened as well but the object was not there, If you zoom in on a segment of the outline you will see the many overlapping area's. I suppose that is what happens when bitmap tracers are involved. As for why the object will not print on my old laserjet, I don't have any idea.

Have a good one!
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[rssk]

It's definitely a candidate for the Rorschach ink blot test.

Roger
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

[tad]

Thanks All,,,,Good info...NOW I am getting really curious about PostScript...I did try to print the blob to a PDF file, and I have had lots of success with that in the past (or maybe I just thought I did)

So now I think I should try some other postscript drivers than Acrobat4 and see (ha) what happens.

The blob is not very evident in the actual image, but it does contribute. I have posted a *modest* (so-so) bitmap version at:
http://www.opholio.com/view_image.ph...2185&pr=z5bdwj
Also have queried Catharina about size and puting one in the MoXart gallery. These *tracer masterpieces* are only decent if you can actually get a good look at the shapes. In print that is about 11 x 17 inches at 600dpi. But with the Flare Plug-In, If I can get the Xara ver up, you can REALLY zoom in.

BTW, today I got a good look at the new Epson 2000P printer, and for the FIRST TIME in many years -- I am impressed. Now for the fade tests (never believe what they say)
Regards,,,,,Tad [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]