Hi everybody,
From the main menu going to menu ->edit ->print I see a very unusual paper-size, in my case 51" by 50".
I would like to know where these dimensions come from and how to select them if possible.
This may be useful to me and others when looking at a view (eg the excellent FamilyTreeView by @ztlxltl ) and needing to export a .svg or a .pdf ready to send to a collaborator or relative.
Does anyone know where these dimension come from or how to set them?
Perhaps the views have a latent capability to scale the canvas!
Thanks in advance.
brian
GRAMPS: 5.2.4
Python: 3.10.12
BSDDB: 6.2.9 (5, 3, 28)
sqlite: 3.37.2 (2.6.0)
LANG: en_US.UTF-8
OS: Linux
Distribution: 5.15.0-130-generic
Linux mint VM on Virtualbox
Glad you like my view. And the view you want to print is actually a pretty important piece of information, since printing is controlled by the view. So I can provide some context here.
The printing implementation is currently pretty basic. I decided that there should definitely be some kind of quality export of the tree (without printing there are only screenshots, I guess). Since a pagination logic that gives good results for all possible trees is quite complex, I decided that the best way is to export (print/save as pdf) the whole tree on one page, with the page size being the size of the tree, and let the user do the preprocessing by hand or automatically with dedicated software if he/she wants to split it on multiple pages.
My impression from threads in this forum is that most users want their tree printed on one large piece of paper. And itâs easier to split a large page into small pages than to combine many small pages into one large one.
I think a possible improvement would be to be able to select different page sizes and not create multiple pages, but instead scale the tree down to fit on one page of that page size. Iâll add that to my list.
Iâm probably misunderstanding you but thatâs not what Iâm seeing with the Windows version. When I click on the print icon in the FTV I get the std Windows print dialog, where I can choose which device to print to. The only PDF printer I have is the built in âMicrosoft print to PDFâ. If I choose that, the tree that is printed ends up on a page size set by the printer driver, which defaults to A4 in my case. Unsurprisingly therefore most of the tree is lost, because itâs much bigger than A4.
In attempts to replicate this on Fedora 37 using Gramps 5.2.2, I am finding the page dimensions fields in the standard OS print dialogs to be disabled.
The dimension specified were about half a landscape letter size.
The views tried are the various Geography and Charts view modes. It was not limited to the experimental FamilyTreeView.
The page dimensions preferences for Reports were in the .gramps/report_options.xml
My previous post was based on what happened on my Win 10 desktop PC. Now Iâm on my Win 11 laptop. In summary, no change.
The print dialog looks different (it would, itâs called âProgressâ) and includes a tick box to âlet the app change my printing preferencesâ. However, even with that option ticked, the page size of the output PDF is that as set within the print dialog. Thus bits of the tree are lost because itâs larger than the PDF page size of A4.
PS Note the use of an upper case âPâ on âProgressâ. This indicates the word is a proper noun, i.e. itâs just a name and has no connection with âprogressâ (lower case âpâ), which is an adjective, describing âforward motionâ.
When I click on the print icon in the Family Tree View, and then click on the Page Setup tab, I see the size of the single page (in my case, 20.56 in x 18.06 in).
When I open the saved PDF, I can send the entire image to the printer if I select the Scale option âFit to printable areaâ (the options you see may depend on your printer). Or I can choose âCustomâ and enter a percentage for scaling. In my case, the maximum scale that will let everything fit on a single page is about 40% of the original.
Of course, if I then print to a normal sheet of paper, it will be very small. But I could send the PDF to a firm that prints posters.
I have to admit that Iâve only tested printing on Ubuntu. There, large and unusual page sizes are no problem and can be saved as PDF, Postscript or SVG. And the workflow I had in mind was pretty similar to the one @GeorgeWilmes outlined.
I just tried on Windows and the Windows driver seems to override the page size that FTV provides/suggests. Iâm not sure if this can be circumvented without implementing a rescale to a specific paper size in FTV. But how do you know what paper size the Windows PDF printer will use (e.g. Letter or A4)?
In general, maybe someone with experience printing other views on Windows can help. As @emyoulation suggests, this may not be FTV specific.
My only suggestion for the time being: Install other (trusted) PDF printers and see if they support large page sizes.
I once used Adobe Reader for a similar task (but not to print a family tree). It has a âPosterâ print mode to split up a large page. Unfortunately, itâs only available for Windows and MacOS (and itâs not FOSS).
I donât know of any alternatives, but there should be some PDF software with similar functionality.
since this morniong I have been experimenting with a tool for âtilingâ a large (in dimensions) PDF file called pdfposter https://pythonhosted.org/pdftools.pdfposter/Examples.html, available through the synaptic utility with only one other dependency, which is FOSS. The tool works quite well if you have a decent way to estimate what size âgridâ you will need. I do not have a plotter of my own and now I am retired I have no access to my employerâs plotter. ooops!
Anyway, I have determined that this tool will suffice and all I will need is a paper guillotine for trimming the edges on a 12 sheet stack. Much cheaper that a wide format plotter.
Most of the work I do needs a landscape format 3-wide by 4 deep of Letter-size tiles to show a quite readable 100 person tree on a tile-print of the very excellent FamilyTreeViewâŚdid I say superb?
Of course if the source-code of this FOSS tool, seemingly available on the authorâs site, was forked and incorporated directly into the Gramps view so user configuration action could specify the grid for any arbitrary output pdf, then it would be quite useful in these views but also for reports and trees and so onâŚ
It seems that depending on the filter chosen by a gramps user the shape of the resultant tree is often very different so a rectangular grid can certainly waste a few pages of printer paper in the blank areas. A clever refinement would be to identify those blank pages for a specified grid, minimize the grid shape and dimensions to minimize the blank pages and so exclude them from the output print.
Thanks for all the ideas and discussion though.
brian
I am very honored by your repeated praise of the addon. Iâm glad you find it useful!
I havenât used the tool, but if it would be useful for multiple tools in Gramps, and if you would like to see it integrated into Gramps, this should be discussed with the Gramps developers. There may be many open questions, such as whether it can be integrated into the AIO for Windows.
Since I donât know the tool, I canât judge whether the integration makes sense and is worth the effort.
Like I said, I havenât used the tool, but canât you print to PDF and then only print the non-blank pages from that PDF?
Despite being a user of gramps for a decade, I am having great trouble understanding this issue.
Do I take it we are NOT talking about the âReports > Graphical reports > Family treeâ option, but some other âviewâ? Perhaps only available in the latest edition?
Or perhaps it is assumed that everyone already knows how to get into âFTVâ?
I do not yet have a version of 5.2.4 set up, but on my production version of 5.1.4 on Win10, I have all page size options.in that particular graphical report and I have no trouble generating svg or pdf output of whatever size or orientation I want. If you are indeed talking about some new âviewâ, and are still having trouble with it, you might well try that âreportâ as an alternative, as it would seem to do all that you are trying to achieve.
I think it would greatly help people who are interested in how to get the most out of gramps if you were clearer about which âviewâ or âreportâ you are talking about, and exactly how to reproduce the behaviour you are experiencing. On AIO 5.1.4 there is no series of steps âmenu > edit > printâ that makes any sense, but perhaps that is a version or o/s issue, or depends on where you start that sequence from?
In 5.1.4 there is no âFamily TreeViewâ available in the Navigator under the âViewâ options for âChartsâ, and the only ihstance of a name similar to that is the Graphical Report I have referred to. A check of addons similarly does not list any addon of that name other than the graphical report. A search on the gramps wiki and the Third party addons page does not list anything with a âFamily TreeViewâ name, other than the graphical report which is actually named âFamily Treeâ or âfamilytree.addonâ.
Changing the page size for Reports is fairly straight-forward. There are âPaper Optionsâ tabs common to all reports. The page dimensions are easily exposed for editing. And those dimensions are saved in a .gramps/report_options.xml configuration file. (But can be over-ridden with the .gramps/books.xml
The other features of Gramps that print are all views: the Geography views and only SOME of the Charts view modes. Printing from views uses the OS print dialogs ⌠which makes it more complex to troubleshoot where persistant settings are saved.
We are lucky to have a developer (@ztlxltl ) actively beta testing their new addon Charts view mode: tentatively called âFamilyTreeViewâ. (The confusion you experienced with the Family Tree addon graphical report is a good reason to kick around ideas for a more unique and evocative addon name.) That new Chart view supports printing. So that developer is well-placed to explore any Print idiosyncrasies.
In the latest version of FTV (v0.1.54) I added an option to scale the tree to fit the page when printing. This way the whole tree can be exported and no parts will be cut off if the page is fixed to a size too small for the tree (like on Windows).
Please note that in my tests the scaling caused distorted text in some cases, but only on Windows, not on Ubuntu.
Maybe this new option will help someone, but it seems not to be the ideal solution for everyone, because the text is sometimes distorted.
Nice. Will have to test this. On Fedora, the earlier v0.1.50 was doing interesting things to the page size in a SVG printed using Print to File. Gramps was claiming a 17.18 inch landscape page width but Inkscape opened it as a 44.5 inch document.
Using Gramps AIO 5.2.4 on Win 11 Pro and the built in âMicrosoft Print to PDFâ printer, my first attempts at using this new scaling option have been unsuccessful. If I tick the box then the PDFs that are generated are zero byte sized, i.e. I get no output at all.
However you imply youâve tested it on Windows and got output. Can you give more details of what (Windows) print settings you used?
