I have created several lines and arcs in Microsoft Visio, and then I grouped them. When I tried to re-size them, they lose their proportions.
I have tried to solve the problem by selecting 'Aspect ratio' in the Protection menu, but it does not work. Any other idea?
This works for me in Visio 2010, without locking aspect ratio or any other special steps. What version of Visio are you using?
Related
I'm trying to make an image file from a control using CopyFromScreen, and it fails unless I set the scale to 100%. With a larger scale the image is progressively offset left and up, the further right and down the window is on the screen. (Unfortunately my eyes struggle at 100%)
I initially tried using DrawToBitmap but that fails as there's a rich text box in the control and it's documented that that won't paint.
I've read articles on this forum and followed the suggestion of including the dpiAware setting in the manifest, but that has no effect. I'm no expert and I'm wondering if it's because I only have VS 2012 and my manifest declaration starts with asmv1 rather than asmv3 so I had to amend the example code?
Any suggestions most welcome.
I've been trying to create PDF files from my Visio drawings. My current method is very simple, just "Save As" pdf in Visio. One issue I have is that the inter-character spacing becomes uneven after the drawing is converted to pdf. I've attached two images here. The first one shows the original font in Visio and the other shows the distorted font in PDF.
Has anyone experienced this problem before? How would you suggest on fixing this?
Thanks!
I observed the same spacing problem with Visio 2013's export to PDF feature, but not when outputting a PDF using Adobe Acrobat XI Pro. It also appeared when pasting a Microsoft Visio drawing object or pasting and EMF from Visio into Word 2013; however, inserting a WMF from the same Visio drawing does not have the problem. I had just started using 2013 although 2016 versions were already available. I did not have the problem with Visio/Word 2007. -- 7/2016: I left most of my prior observations, but this, the issue appears to have been fixed by Microsoft Update.
The PDF generator is using a similar, but not the same font as Visio. The stroke weights of the examples you posted are not the same (note the horizontal lines in the 'e' and 't').
Try a different font.
Posting the PDF output itself would be very helpful, but from what you have said already, coupled with what you have shown in images, it appears that the Visio output is setting each character individually and getting the character widths wrong, thus the placement of each following letter is too far beyond the preceding one.
I'm not too sure of the baseline positioning, either, because the endpoint of that curving blue line below the "c" in the screenshots you posted is significantly closer to the text in the rendered PDF than in the initial screenshot above it.
See if Visio can deal with Courier first, as that is a monospace font (i.e. each glyph occupies the same width on the line). If it generates text in Courier that still shows wandering letterspacing, I would begin to wonder whether there's a newer/updated Visio release to seek out before continuing to fight with this.
This is apparently a long lasting bug in Visio. I still see it in my Visio 1708, build 8431.2250). The bug is at least 4 years here already.
The working fix to avoid kerning problems for single diagrams is to export them in any bitmap format (e.g. png) or Windows Metafile Format (WMF) or use screen snipping tools to copy diagrams from the screen.
From that, may be the solution can be in tuning the PDF renderer to produce set of raster images instead of using the embedded vector graphics.
Bug report on Microsoft Answers:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-word/font-spacing-kerning-issues-after-cut-paste-from/e930ec40-507f-4b25-9d72-c6c41b9d70cf
I've made a little Towers of Hanoi game, but nothing what was set on my PC looks the same on a different computer, not even the fonts. Everything is so messed up, I couldn't do it better even if I wanted this to happen. To say it short the backgrounds used for controls and forms are out of place, the initial values used for size and position of both forms and controls are bloody changed, and my project just looks like a huge mess. It's true I've worked in absolute values, because usually a programming language respects the programmer's point of view, and doesn't scales and moves everything the way it wants. If I wanted my project to rescale according to screen resolution I would had used relative coordinates, and made all my forms and controls dimensions be a certain amount of the screen's width and height.
Is there a way to preserve the project just as it was initially designed, so it would look the same on any computer?
I'm using Visual Studio 2010, and Windows 7 as OS.
You don't tell us specifically which properties you've modified from the defaults, or show us a screenshot of the before and after views from which we might be able to infer which modifications you've made. But you did mention something about changing the font, so we'll go with that.
In fact, it does try to preserve your specified properties to the extent possible. But sometimes it is just not possible. For example, if you specify a font for your controls that isn't available on the other computer, then it has no choice but to fall back to a font that is available. If you have any experience with web page design, it is a very similar problem. You have to use a small subset of web-safe fonts to ensure that they will be available on all of your users' computers. That's also why web designers are so keen now on embedding fonts into pages.
Anyway, it goes without saying that if the font has to change, the layout is going to be messed up. Different fonts are different sizes, so different amounts of text are going to fit, causing some to get cut off. That is why, in general, you should avoid changing properties like Font. If you use the defaults, things are a lot more compatible. But neither web pages nor desktop applications are WYSIWYG. You need images or PDF files for that.
Then there are system settings like DPI that can really mess things up, too. Keeping the default font isn't going to help you there. You have to design your application in a smart way. You mention something about relative layouts—these are the ticket. Unfortunately, WinForms doesn't make it easy to do this. It all but forces you into specifying absolute sizes and positions based on the pixel grid, which is mostly a waste of time, as you've seen. I describe in detail how to accomplish this in WinForms in this answer. The AutoSize property will be very useful to you. Of course, you'll also need the dynamically-growing TableLayoutPanel and/or FlowLayoutPanel controls, otherwise you'll end up with automatically sized controls that overlap one another.
Pre-emptive snarky comment: you should totally drop WinForms and use WPF instead. It is new, and cool, and sexy, and all but forces you the other way into pixel-independent layouts. Of course, it also makes it really easy to create butt-ugly, downright unusable applications that look like some of the stuff Microsoft has been churning out over the past couple of years.
#Cody Gray thanks for your insights.
com/qMBJS.png
The first image is how the main menu looks. It's kinda self-explanatory how it should had looked, without the big white margins while the text should had been inside the labels backgrounds
The second one is some in-game footage. And this is just one of the levels. It's so messed up I'm almost sorry I've lost a night doing some heavy work on the image editing side of the matter. I'm not at my own PC right now, so I've tried to rearrange all the stuff directly in Visual Studio's design window, to show how the level should had closely looked. Just imagine it without the white and black margins surrounding some controls.
Also I've tried to set the controls and forms parameters through code, when the form loads, trying to force it to look as it should but the result wasn't any better.
Looking for a component, dll, etc, for OCR for a VB.NET program. Using VS PRO 2008.
The source is a bunch of small png images, and I am just getting a price out of them. Very simple.
Tried tessnet2, but could not get png to work. Don't mind commercial, but not too expensive - maybe about $100. Want something simple to use and preferably with support if needed. This is for a commercial application.
Thank you!
Microsoft Office 2003 onwards (Or Word 2003+) comes with something called Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) Its a COM component you can use to perform ocr.
See this:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/modi.aspx
And I also bumped into this:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2006/10/01/Free-OCR-software_3F00_-You-may-already-have-it_2E002E002E00_.aspx
The downside of course would be needing office installed I think.
Got tessnet2 to work with png. png was not working because of the transparent background. Made a second image with a background color contrasting the text color, and drew the original image on top of that. The second image ocr'd perfectly.
Would still be interested in a commercial ocr not too expensive, but this works now.
Thank you for your replies!
I'm loving the added Wireframe template and corresponding shapes in Visio 2010. One thing I can't seem to find though (not in Visio, Office help or using Google) is a good way to draw tabular controls.
The only built-in shape that comes close is a List Box of which I can link several together. However this has several disadvantages as this leaves me without "rows" in my table.
Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to do this? I'd prefer a shape that is aware of the Visio2010 'theme' stuff, but at this point any quick way to draw a grid in a wireframe would be much appreciated.
PS. Searching for shapes on "table" gives me lovely picnic-table-shapes but no usable grids. Searching for "grid" gives me one or two shapes which aren't particularly helpful either.
I find Excel a good way to manage grids in Visio. You can easily add and remove columns, manage formating etc.
In Visio 2010 go to Insert -> Object -> Microsoft Excel Worksheet.
Is was looking for the same and found a way:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio-help/using-shapes-to-create-tables-in-visio-HA001182242.aspx
So you have to search in the stencils "Charting shapes" to find the grid.
Still not that intuitive to work with, but will do.
Insert->Shapes->More Shapes->Charting Shapes->Grid
If we are looking for Visio Stencils for Grid/Table, a great resource can be downloaded here:
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/about/stencils/
Too bad no one had a solution. I'll mark this response as an answer to my own question then.
The answer to my problem (for so far I could find) in fact then seems to be that you have to work around this omission in Visio by either:
using linked "List box" shapes
use one of the (rather crappy) table shapes you can search for and find online
use a screenshot (or something alike) from another program
If anyone ever lands at this question with a better workaround or even a real solution please be sure to add it.
I use Visio to design wireframes. When I need datagrids or tabular data, I end up using Excel to design a grid with some data and formatting (fonts, size, border, etc.) Then I select the grid in Excel, copy it to clipboard and then Paste Special in Visio and select Image. Not perfect but works for me.
Create the desired table in Excel. Simply copy and paste special as Microsoft Excel Worksheet, and you can then click into it and do whatever you want.
Tip: Color your grid before copying it so that you don't see the Visio gridlines. Looks much nicer on-screen!