Rectifying differences in spacing of objects in layout and pdf

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Hello,

I placed a box around some text in a layout but when I printed this layout using the Adobe PDF printer(Win 7,64-bit OS), the spacing of the box was different in the pdf. Am I missing a step here to ensure that the objects appear the same when printed?

 layout1.jpg (4.38 KB) pdf1.jpg (3.55 KB)
If you post an Igor experiment that reproduces the issue I will take a look and try to figure out what the problem is.

November 26, 2013 at 06:50 pm - Permalink

I attached example graphs and layout. I hit File, print layout then select Adobe pdf.
Thanks Howard.
test.pxp (8.84 MB)

November 26, 2013 at 10:08 pm - Permalink

The size of the box surrounding your legends is determined by Igor at the time the legend graphics are generated. For the screen this is when the layout is drawn on screen. For printing this is when you print.

When printing, Igor generates graphics at 8 times screen resolution. So the 10 point font in the legend becomes 80 points.

The width of text at 80 points is not guaranteed to be 10 times wider than the width at 10 points. Consequently the width of the box surrounding the legend will not scale precisely.

The box around the word Text is a drawn object that does not depend on anything else so its size translates precisely when printed at 8x.

You will get better alignment of the legend and the box around text if you change the anchor of the legends as follows:

1. Double-click the legend (in the graph, not in the layout) to display the Modify Annotation dialog.

2.Click the Position tab in the Modify Annotation dialog.

3. Change the anchor from Middle Top to Right Top for FFTgraph_chg_8 and to Left Top for FFTgraph_chg_5.

This fixes the edge of the legend closest to the box around Text leaving the other edge to move slightly because of the resolution change when printing.

I have attached two PDFs. I created the first before changing the legend anchors and the second after changing the legend anchors. I added red lines as visual guides to the edges of the box around Text.
Layout Before Legend Anchor Change.pdf (46.7 KB) Layout After Legend Anchor Change.pdf (46.7 KB)

November 27, 2013 at 07:33 am - Permalink

This worked, thanks. In the future I will be more careful about drawn objects like lines and boxes now that I know this.

November 27, 2013 at 08:00 am - Permalink