MapInfo Pro

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  • 1.  PDF Font enlargement!

    Posted 10-12-2022 10:01
    Hello
    One of our customers came to us reporting that Layouts printed to PDF are displaying different sized fonts according to whether they are text on the Layout or Labels in the MapWindow.
    Essentially, both sets of text had been set to 10 pt Arial but the Labels in the Map Window were larger!
    Has anyone come across this?
    Is there a setting somewhere that would cause this, I wonder?

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    John Ievers
    CDR Group
    Hope Valley, United Kingdom
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  • 2.  RE: PDF Font enlargement!

    Employee
    Posted 10-14-2022 01:57
    Hi John

    I just tried to reproduce this but I wasn't able to.

    In the image below, the long text is a 14 point SmartText inserted onto the layout and the short text below is a label from the map, also 14 point in size.

    Do you have some more details?
    Does the text also appear larger on screen or only in the PDF?

    One thing where we all may go wrong from time to time is that we change a layer setting on a stand-alone map assume it's the embedded map.
    Could that explain what they see?

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    Peter Horsbøll Møller
    Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
    Precisely | Trust in Data
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  • 3.  RE: PDF Font enlargement!

    Posted 10-14-2022 12:27
    Hi Peter

    We did manage to produce a pdf illustrating the issue, and when set to 100% the labels in the pdf were noticeably larger than those on the Map Window in MapInfo. However, it was not possible to discern the cause because we were viewing everything on screen only rather than on paper. We suspect that it was more to do with relative display settings. We did establish that previous problems with multiple custom labels related to a previous version of MapInfo.
    We've since spent some time trying various settings. We made two pdfs of the map using Create pdf > Options (Map print options) to set either Map size > Fit to page (default) or Map size > Window size. When specifically set in Adobe Acrobat Viewer to 100% the font sizes are the same on both pdfs, so MapInfo is correctly scaling the font even when the image size varies.
    We also created a screenshot of the map and used the MapInfo command Save Image. At 100% scaling, the font on the screen shot image was larger than the text on screen and looked similar to the pdf. Using Save Image the image was massively larger when displayed in a image handler (Photos in Windows 10) at 100% but when aligned with the original map window was, unsurprisingly, identical.
    On screen, the font on the map inside MapInfo appears visibly smaller than the font on the pdf at 100%, and everyone on the course concurred with this. However, there are sundry variables on screen including pdf zoom size (set to 100%), and the combination of screen resolution (1920 x 1080) and scaling (100%). Changing those unsurprisingly changed the size of text on screen.
    So, the next step is to analyse the pdfs. As they're not conventional pdfs, we've been unable to extract the text from the labels to analyse them, but they do look larger than 9pt when viewed at 100% and this impression is confirmed when printed (again at 100%, not "fit to page") alongside some conventional text in Word that is set to Arial. However, having scanned the print at very high resolution, enlarged the image and then measured the font size with a ruler, we've come to the conclusion that this is an optical illusion and the font is actually the correct size. We expect Arial 9pt to be small, and on the MapInfo screen it is. When it's printed out in bold on a pdf it looks bigger than what you see on the MapInfo screen, but actually it is correctly sized.
    Thanks mostly to the efforts of our Bruce - I can't claim any of the results of this!

    Unless anyone else knows otherwise…



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    John Ievers
    CDR Group
    Hope Valley, United Kingdom
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