[Qgis-developer] printing issues

[Maciej Sieczka]

Hi Steven

I never got your reply to my questions and commnets which follow below.
Would you mind looking at them? Which issues will be fixed in 0.9?

Maciej Sieczka wrote:
>>>> Maciej wrote:
>>> Maciej wrote:
>> Paolo wrote:
> Steven Bell wrote:
> 
>> Hi all, Thanks once again for your testing.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> I'm just back from a short vacation on a rainy Baltic coast. It was
> cool (indeed).
> 
>>>> However, either in "cache" or "render" mode in the *map 
>>>> composer* line widths on the legend and on the map *do not 
>>>> correspond*. On the legend it's always thicker.
> 
>> This is a known problem for cache mode, since the cache is created 
>> at a variable resolution and then variably scaled.  In render mode, 
>> the line widths appear to correspond.
> 
> You are correct. The reason why I thought that the line width on the
> the lengend and on the map don't correspond in render mode for me
> either, is that I have just found out that one has to turn on the
> render mode *separately* for the legend and the map. I didn't know that
> before. So my fault. However, IMO it's questionable if switching
> between the render and cache mode should be print-composer-wise, or
> sperate for the legend and the map as it is currently. What do you think?
> 
> 
>> I'll try to look into it more when I get a chance (unfortunately, 
>> that may be a few weeks).
> 
> No problem at all. I'm glad you might be interested in looking into it.
> 
>>> the border of polygons however it is not synchronized between 
>>> legend and map
> 
>> I changed the line for the polygon outline to be a "cosmetic pen" 
>> (1px wide, regardless of scale) when the line widths were getting 
>> out of hand.  Since that should be fixed now, I can probably put the
>>  original line widths back.
> 
> I think that it would be consistent this way. If one really wants 1px
> wide border for his polygons on the printout, he can set the border
> width to 0 in the project.
> 
>>>>> 2. labels placement and size in the map canvas not always 
>>>>> corresponds to that in the map composer and printout
> 
>>>> Still valid. See the following attachments:
>>>>
>>>> labels_mapview.png labels_composer.png labels_pdf.png
>>>>
>>>> They show how the labelled points look in the QGIS map view, map
>>>>  composer and in the output pdf, respectively. Each looks much 
>>>> different. Could it be at least fixed so that the view in the 
>>>> map composer and the resulting pdf looked similar?
> 
>> I haven't done much testing with vector labels, so I'm not too 
>> surprised some bugs still lurk there.  If you could send me some 
>> simple projects which reproduce the problem, that would be great 
>> help.
> 
> Please find the points shapefile attached. It's from the free
> "Spearfish" GRASS dataset (BTW, the new "Save as shapefile" worked
> great for the original GRASS vector layer!). Display labels from field
> 'str1' and try to print.
> 
> I'm not sending you the project with labels set on, as it shows there's
> a bug that once you set labels on, save the project and reload it, the
> labels are not displayed anymore and I can't find a way to make them to
> - besides starting the project from scratch again.
> 
>>>>> 3. vector point symbols get rasterized in the printout
> 
>>>> Still an issue. Is it fixable?
> 
>>> moreover, point size is much larger (1.4x? 2x?) in the legend than
>>> in the map, and larger in the pdf.
> 
>> Unfortunately, I don't think we can fix this for 0.9.  It will 
>> require some significant changes to the symbology and rendering, 
>> which has the potential to break things.
> 
> Really too bad. This is quite an issue.
> 
>>>>> 4. irregular letter spacing in the printout
> 
>>>> Still the case. See the attachment spacing_pdf.png. Moreover, 
>>>> layer's name is to close to categories' names below, overlapping
>>>> it a bit.
>>>>
>>>> Also, in the composer *the very same legend* before printing to 
>>>> pdf looks completely different (font_composer.png) and rather 
>>>> corrupted. Can this avoided? What's strange, if I zoom in in the
>>>> map composer once or twice, the legend's font starts looking 
>>>> same as in target pdf, hmm. The same problem applies to 
>>>> scalebar.
> 
>> The ugly font bug strikes again!  What operating system and Qt 
>> version are you using?
> 
> Ubuntu Dapper, QT 4.3 built from source (qconfig.pri attached in case
> it matters what features where compiled).
> 
>> I have exactly the same problem, and I don't think there's much we 
>> can do.  (I'm running Ubuntu with Qt 4.2/4.3)
> 
> So a QT bug?
> 
>>>> Another, smallish, issue which remains is that the default font 
>>>> size for legend "6" is always too small too be any readable. I 
>>>> guess defaulting to at least 8 is a better idea.
> 
>>> agreed. also, default font (sans-serif?) does not appear optimal 
>>> on many machines.
> 
>> I'm pretty sure Qt provides the default font, so we'd have to 
>> manually override this.  I'll see if we can do this in a simple, 
>> cross-platform way. The font size is calculated based off of the map
>> scale, and often is less than 6.  Perhaps some code to limit the 
>> default to a minimum of 8 would be helpful.
>>
>> I'm not going to have much time to work on QGIS in the next few 
>> weeks, but I'll try to fix what I can for 0.9.
> 
> Understood. Many thanks for getting the print composer rolling again
> and good luck.
> 
> Maciek