Tiling Problem

I've been printing some maps recently on letter paper with a 2% overlap on the tiling settings. However, when I print them out, some symbols do not print out on both sides of a page break, especially when only a fairly small portion of the symbol would appear on one side. Since the maps are made up entirely of symbols (they're tiles like one might buy on heavy weight card stock), this means that parts of the map are missing and it can't be assembled properly. Does anyone know of a way to fix this problem?

Comments

  • One thing that might work (and I haven't tried it, so please work on a copy of the map), is to explode the symbols along the page boundaries. If the symbols are made of multiple entities, that should improve things.

    Someone else will probably have another idea as well.

    Steve
  • I tried exploding the symbols and this doesn't fix the problem. As such, I would guess it's more related to the inserted PNGs getting this treatment, rather than symbols (as the symbols were made of imported PNGs).

    Anyone else have ideas for how I might fix this?
  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    How much woud you have to increase the overlap until the PNGs show up on both pages? Would that be an option?
  • Other than the additional waste of ink and paper, I suppose it's an option. I experimented with printing to PDF last night and it produced the same results, so I can at least test things without wasting ink or paper, but when it comes to producing final product, I find that a 2% overlap is just the right level of compromise for having enough overlap to matching things up without it being so large that I feel like I'm wasting paper and ink.

    I'll let you know what levels of overlap "fix" the problem.
  • I'm guessing that you need enough overlap that the insertion point of all the borderline symbols appear on both maps. Unless you're using big symbols, the overlap shoudn't need to be very large
  • The symbols are "big" because the map is made up entirely of symbols. The symbols are imported PNGs of map tiles. They vary in size from 5' x 5' to 40' x 40' (map dimensions, printed dimensions are 1" x 1" to 8" x 8").

    After playing with the overlap settings, I can state that for the maps I was testing on, an increase of the overlap to 20% did not eliminate the problem. Thus, increasing the overlap does not appear to be a viable solution.

    Something I did notice, however, is that it doesn't appear to be related to the amount of the PNG that appears on a page, or at least not soley on that. On the same maps other PNGs who had similar amounts "bleed" onto the next page printed out just fine. As best I can tell, it appears to be related to PNGs which are rotated when inserted. If the PNG is rotated, then the smaller part of a vertical "bleed" doesn't show up while horizontal "bleeds" work just fine. If I had to guess, I would say that the tiling algorithm that generates the print job works one row at a time and it isn't looking far enough away for drawing elements which might appear on the pages in each row. It's probably defining the boundaries of the row in image terms, and then only looking for items which are within or "close" to that bounded box. In my case, the images being cut-off are 40' long (map dimensions, 8" printed) and thus their centers may be as much as 20' away from the page boundary (map dimensions, 4" printed).
  • Yeah, those are big (relative to the print size) symbols.

    I don't have any other ideas -- this is an advanced problem (and maybe one that needs to go on the development list)

    Steve
  • Simon RogersSimon Rogers Administrator, ProFantasy Traveler
    If you could do a simple, reproduceable example with a single built in PNG symbol, that would help fix the problem.
  • I'll work something up later today and post it.
  • edited April 2009
    I was unable to duplicate the effect with any of the built-in symbols that I have. However, I have worked up an example that I can pass around by changing the PNGs to just be swaths of a single color, and, in two cases, with some transparent areas. That shouldn't get me into any copyright trouble anywhere, and while it's not a really simple example, it does demonstrate the effect that I'm seeing perfectly.

    If I'm doing this right, the FCW file should be attached to this post.

    A pdf copy of what my printer produces can be found here.


    An archive with the folder containing the PNG symbols can be found here.


    Unzip the archive and place it in your #\Symbols\User\ directory.

    When you can see both, note how the red rectangle ends flush with the bottom of the large yellow square in the FCW file, but doesn't do that on page 2 of the pdf.
  • 18 days later
  • DkarrDkarr Traveler
    edited April 2009
    It will be difficult to give you an answer. Since all your symbols are custom PNG symbols they are not part of the file that you posted. Here's what your file looks like when anybody that does not have your symbols opens it.

    No Symbols
  • Hence the link to a zip file that contains substitute images.

    (Well, they're links now, before they were just text of the address.

    Also, the print preview image won't demonstrate the problem. You have to actually generate a print out (either digital or physical).
  • DkarrDkarr Traveler
    edited April 2009
    I do have the files in Symbols\User directory. Still no symbols. I also tried them in the default one when they extract PNG Insert Test, and that does not work either. Could you check the location of the files on your PC?

    Thanks
  • DkarrDkarr Traveler
    Never mind. I had to shut off CC3 and restart before it would read the symbols.
  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    I've created a simpler example (attached), using DD3 symbols. The table in the example doesn't show up on the second page of a printed pdf. That's what you're referring to, right?

    We are looking into this.
  • 19 days later
  • Sorry it took so long to reply, but I had some computer problems that had me destroy my Windows partition and forced reinstalltion. I'm not completely done with said problems, but I've got a temporary solution that did allow me to check it out, and yes that does appear to be the problem I was talking about. I'll express the caveat that I don't have DD3 and thus was looking at a whole bunch of Red X's, but they were exhibiting the exact same problem that I was seeing in my maps.
  • edited April 2009
    What is the size of the thing (in paper ?)

    One solution that comes in mind is exporting whole map as a JPG/BMP/PNG and then cutting the picture with an image editor.

    Photofiltre has a plug-in doing that I used some time ago...

    photofiltre

    (plug-in is HTML split, you can control the number of images but there's no overlapping).

    JdR
  • If I'm going to do that, I might as well cut CC3 out of the picture altogether. My preference for using CC3 arises from its ability to handle not only the assembly of the different map components (all of which are PNG based) but also on using it's printing capability to get the maps printed out at the proper scale.
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