Designing layouts for high res screens whilst keeping the ability to print screen

[liltbrockie]

Hi there... I was considering redesigning all our layouts for high screen res eg: 1280 x 1024 But I have encountered an issue.... a lot of our users like to be able to just do a print screen of the layout they are on... this worked fine for the old layout that catered for 1024x768... it just fitted on an sheet of A4 nicely... but with the new higher size layout the print screen does not work its far too big... I can't find any one of automatically scaling it down to A4 prior to printing.... The only fix for this would be to create a script for the print screen function that takes them to a different layout prior to printing!

[normanicus]

There are probably many ways of doing this, one of them being to use full Adobe Acrobat. That costs money.

You can do it with python, a free, open source programming language that is quite easy to learn. If you are using OS X it is already installed.

The module needed is pdftools. A page about using this is here:

http://www.verypdf.c...aper/resize.htm

Here is an extract that shows how it can be used:

set page scale

-z

pdftools -i "C:\input.pdf" -o "C:\output.pdf" -z "90 110"

means set page width to 90% of primary page width, and page height to 110% of primary page height.

You can run any external script from Filemaker but there would be quite a bit of learning involved. Perhaps someone will have a simpler way.

[liltbrockie]

Thanks for your reply!

VeryPDF costs money too though :-(

[Lee Smith]

Please update your profile to reflect what platform and operating system you are using.

Lee

[normanicus]

VeryPDF was a bad page to send you. pdftools itself is free and that is all you need once you have Python installed. I might give it a try and give you fuller instructions but, as said above, I need to know which platform and the OS version you are using,

Norman

[liltbrockie]

Well I'm on windows 7 / Filemaker 11 + Server 11 Advanced Environment. That would be really great if you did come with any more detailed instructions! I'll have a look at it myself as well.. though I don't know the first thing about python.

[Lee Smith]

Click on your name, top right side, chose My Profile, then on the Profile page, click on the big button that says Edit my Profile.

[normanicus]

I'm not finding this easy to get info on. However, I have PDFCreator installed on Windows. This is a free, virtual printer that can be selected like any other from the print dialog box. It produces a PDF and it can scale the output. See here for how to do it:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.printpoint.net.au%2Fpdfs%2FPrintPoint_Steps%2FScale%2520Factor%2520-%2520PDFCreator.pdf

I tested it and Filemaker (I'm using FM11) appears to save the settings. So, if you install PDFCreator from here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/files/PDFCreator/PDFCreator%201.2.3/PDFCreator-1_2_3_setup.exe/download

you can try it out.

The problem with doing it this way is that you need to save the settings anywhere you want the functionality. I suppose this would be true of any solution,

Norman

[liltbrockie]

Thanks for the effort! Its not ideal though.. I really need a one click button that just prints the screen... dont want my users having to save then open then choose print again....

[liltbrockie]

I've just done it :-) PDF Creator + SumatraPDF and some command line printing!

[normanicus]

Well done. However, I think it could be done with a click of a button just with PDFCreator. The script on the button would:

Enter Preview Mode

Print[] (using PDFCreator and your settings)

Enter Browse Mode

[liltbrockie]

Well done. However, I think it could be done with a click of a button just with PDFCreator. The script on the button would:

Enter Preview Mode

Print[] (using PDFCreator and your settings)

Enter Browse Mode

Dont think so... i need it to print automatically as well.... is there a setting in PDFCreator to have the documnet automatically print after creation?

[normanicus]

" is there a setting in PDFCreator to have the documnet automatically print after creation?"

Yes. Open PDFCreator, select Options > Program > Print and click the 'Print after saving' check box.

However, I am not sure how to get round the file naming bit. Should work as for other printers by using a variable to pass in the path and file name.

[liltbrockie]

" is there a setting in PDFCreator to have the documnet automatically print after creation?"

Yes. Open PDFCreator, select Options > Program > Print and click the 'Print after saving' check box.

However, I am not sure how to get round the file naming bit. Should work as for other printers by using a variable to pass in the path and file name.

Not sure what you mean re: "file naming bit" as far as im concerned as long as the screen gets printed im happy...indeed ill probably run a script after to delete the file once its been printed....

EDIT: hmmm seems to be a bit of a problem with the old auto printing from PDFCreator.... the PDF is not scaled correctly. It's odd because when I open the PDF manually in any reader it looks ok....