I have created some flowcharts in Dia (diaw.exe 0.97.2 - Windows 7 64 bit).
Now I want to export them to pdf.
This is working alright if I use File > Page Setup > Fit to...
Problem is, Diagrams with different sizes all get zoomed differently.
My perfect scale would be 41, but when I use that, I just get a bunch of empty pages when I export them to pdf.
What "works" is if I draw a rectangle around the whole page in dia and set the line color to white, so it is not displayed. Still, the pdfs contain 3 empty pages and on the 4th page is my flowchart.
I didnt find a dia-related forum, so I hope somebody here can help me out.
It "seems" to be just because of the Page setup...
Thanks a lot,
basti
Page setup is exactly why this happens. If you didn't make any changes to your dia setup, your grid consists of grey lines and blue lines. The blue lines mark borders of a page. If you want everything to fit on one page, you have to enlarge your page until everything fits into one page.
I faced the same issues when using pdf export in dia, and it is fixed by avoiding the pdf export, and to rather use a pdf printer instead.
Related
I receive postage labels from a supplier as single page pdf documents. The labels would fit on an A5 sheet but they are presented as a portrait within an A4 page, also in portrait orientation. I would like to be able to print two of these labels per A4 page to cut down on waste.
This can be achieved by rotating the page content without rotating the page itself. Or by resizing the page by swapping the height and width about the content. I am aware that both of these things can result in content being lost, which isn't a problem for my use case. Ideally I'd like a command line application that works on both Linux or Windows machines. Unfortunately, web searches for "rotate" or "resize" pdf will point to the many applications that just rotate or resize pdf pages along with the content which isn't what I want.
Similar questions:
With PdfBox: identical use case, see my comments on PdfBox below.
With iText: almost identical use case, I explicitly don't want any resizing of the content. See my comments on iText below as well.
Things I have investigated tried:
pdftk - too basic
ImageMagick - the original image contains transparency and the extent argument results in a visible loss of quality
pdfjam - also requires install of Latex and PdfPages. Ideally I'd like something that works on both Windows and Linux.
iText7 - the documentation isn't great. Looks like it was completely re-written in the last few years and the Nuget feed makes it clear that previous version, iTextSharp, is EOL. Consequently most of the examples one finds online (including on this site) are out of date. iText7 doesn't let you resize a page. I got as far as saving a document with a new page that was the right size but struggling to copy the content over. I think I could get what I wanted from this but it would take a long time and I'm trying to do something simple.
PdfBox - I've already tried one .NET library without success. Looking at the comments to the question I've linked above, this one seems to also have a version issue. I'm trying to do something really simple here, I will try this one if I exhaust all other avenues
Gimp - does what I want but I have to fire up the application, point and click quite a few times to rescale the image canvas, set the background and export
Screenshot the label from a pdf reader at 100% size and paste into a Word/LibreOffice doc. Sadly this is the most reliable method I have at the moment
I have example labels but they contain the name and address of people I've sent things to, I'd rather not upload them.
Try the command line tool cpdf from here: https://community.coherentpdf.com
cpdf -rotate-contents <angle> in.pdf -o out.pdf
to rotate contents without rotating the page. or...
cpdf -mediabox "100 100 600 500" in.pdf -o out.pdf
(and -cropbox and so on) to change page dimensions without altering content. Chapter 3 of the manual is of relevance.
You can also prepare the file by removing any page rotation whilst counter-rotating the content to leave the visual appearance unchanged:
cpdf -upright in.pdf -o out.pdf
I've got the following problem:
I want to print a PDF file as a booklet, using Adobe Acrobat Reader (in a copy shop, they got no better printing software). Unfortunately, Adobe shrinks my file down to the printable area. Instead I want to have it printet 50%(cause it'a a booklet, every page shrinked down by half) the original size, without shrinking any further, the margins simply cut off (just the egde of some pics etc, not important, the size matters)
My idea was, to use a software to create a white margin around every page, covering the stuff in the not-printable-area. Then adobe would not shrink anything down.
Does anyone know a tool for my problem? I couldnt find one. (running on either Windows or Ubuntu)
I would prefer a command line tool, cause I got a bunch of files to print.
Or is there a way to tell adobe Reader to not shrink anything (I know it works with normal printing, just couldnt figure it out with booklet printing)
Or are there any other ideas out there?
thanks in advance
Nevermind, i found a solution:
I created a PDF template with a white margin, transparent in the middle.
Using 'pdftk' I can easily set my original file als background of my template.
Done.
For a deck of lecture slides, I have extracted several vector illustrations from a PDF-file. I did this by highlighting the relevant area in Preview.app, copying, and opening a new file from the clipboard.
The figures look just fine, even though I noticed that the files are a little large. When I open them in Illustrator, I can see what's described in the screenshot – that all of the page content is still there, it's just hidden because it lies outside the crop area.
Now I could simply remove everything except the relevant figures in Illustrator, but I would much rather automate the process, since I have a large number of figures.
How can I automate this process such that everything outside the crop area is discarded and everything inside it is preserved as a vector image?
You can use redact utility to remove the content.
Just go to https://doxiview.cib.de/showcase/index.html?locale=default
Choose redact tool
upload your PDF
Choose on the right Select Area and redact fill color as white
Mark all content, which you want to remove
click on apply
download PDF
Afterwards you can crop the PDF and you won't have the content being still there.
There's no need to rasterize. Just crop the pages then use Acrobat DC to "Sanitize" the document. That will completely remove any non-visible parts of the file.
In Acrobat Pro, go to Preflight and select the setting below.
Then click edit to the right
You should be able to create Adobe droplets with this preflight setting for automation
I have a diagram I created that is rather large. I'm trying to figure out how to print it so that it will nicely print over multiple pages, how do I do this?
When I currently print the problem is the elements of the diagram print verrrry large. Like one button takes up an entire page which is a waste of ink.
What is the best practice (proper way) to set up the diagram in DIA to make printing proper and scale correctly to paper size and so forth etc.
I'm running the Mac Os X Version of DIA currently.
If you now how many pages wide and tall your diagram should be
Select File->Page Setup... from the menu
Select "Fit to"
Enter the number of pages
Are you aware that "page breaks" are always displayed in Dia (usually blue lines) That's an
easy way to check how your printed diagram will end up on the pages
If the simple approach with the number of pages does not fit your approach, you'll have to switch back from "Fit to" to "Scale" and work out the scale that you're looking for.
I ended up exporting it from dia as an svg and then resizing it in gimp when I wanted to print out my entire diagram, which stuffed up the text sizes for me, but I had changed the text from the default size so if you haven't changed the text from the default size it will probably still look ok.
In the end print screen and paint was what gave me the best results with dia, sad but true.
If you do find a better way of exporting files for printing please let me know.
When i draw a small circle in LibreOffice draw and export it to pdf i get some extra dots around the circles. Especially in the upper left and lower right outer corner of the circle.
See example PDF here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/233922/example-dots-circle.pdf
or as a Screenshot here:
You have any idea how i can get rid of this?
It is old bug and has not been fixed yet. I can reproduce it under Linux and Windows. My version: LibreOffice 4.1.0.
Create new file in LO Impress or LO Draw.
Draw ellipse (or rounded rectangle, or smile etc.).
Set line width e.g. 5mm (for better view).
Export as PDF.
I propose two workaround:
Export to MS PowerPoint and export in it :/
Print to PDF (using e.g. cups-pdf).
ad 1) You must have MS PP and you graphics may look bad.
ad 2) I use cups-pdf and PDF look very well, but:
Text is stored as bitmap graphics (small rectangles)! You can not extract text without using OCR.
You must use paper format from list (A4, A0, Letter etc.). If you use unstandardised paper format you must use bigger format and you get white bars on PDF. However you can use pdfcrop and remove white bars.
PDF is always orienter horizontally. If you print as vertically you can rotate pdf using pdf270 command line tool.
In Adobe Reader (version 11 at least) -> Go to "Preferences" => "Page Display" => uncheck "Enhance thin lines"
Libre Office seems to add dots of 0 size and practically no visibility. When "Enhance thin lines" is checked, Adobe Reader will make these dots visible.
Best wishes,
Patrick
Similar to the https://stackoverflow.com/users/1797782/dzwiedziu-nkg 's answer, I need a multi-step process to fix this issue.
Steps:
Open the file in a pdf viewer (Document Viewer for me in Ubuntu.)
Print the pdf to a file (also a pdf) from the viewer. I assume this also uses cups-pdf, as it modifies the image size. (I don't mind, because I use the next step to eliminate all margins anyways.)
Use pdfcrop to remove all the extra space around the actual content's bounding box. If you just give pdfcrop one argument, it doesn't overwrite the old file, so use the same argument twice:
$ pdfcrop monkey.pdf monkey.pdf
Another "workaround" that worked for me:
Go without outline. You can set the line style in Draw to "none" and just work with flat solid objects.
PS: I see these dots also in Draw, not just in the exported pdf.
A simple workaround is to "patch" the dot in Libreoffice Draw using a white object -- say, a square with white area and white outline. Note that you can not see the dot in Draw. So you first generate the pdf with the orginal drawing, see where the dot appears in the pdf, go back to Draw, and a add a white patch where it is required.
Searching for a workaround myself, I've found this awk script called odg2epsfix that will fix the exported EPS to not contain those ghost dots anymore.
I stumbled upon it in this launchpad bug entry.
Fixed in LibreOffice pre-export.
Steps:
Right click on the circle in LibreOffice and select "Line"
On the "Line" page, set "Corner Style" to "-none-"
Save document and Export as PDF.
The dot is gone without removing line enhance. Mine still shows in preview but doesn't print.
The bug is still present in LO 6.0. But if you set "Cap style" to "flat" in the "Line" tab of the "Graphic Styles", the dots disappear from the screen and from the exported pdf.