Vertical dotted lines in Preview

[DDTech]

Hi,

Upgrading from VPE3.1 to VPE so far went smooth. I am running VPE in the compatibility-mode with 1/10mm units.

I now ran into an issue with the preview and vertical dotted lines.

VPE3.1 showed it like this:



The vertical dotted lines ( SetPen(1, PS_DOT, <color>) ) show up as dashed grey lines, which is fine.

VPE5 now renders the same report like this:



The grey dotted lines now appear as solid black lines or do not appear at all (lower right area) or partly show up.

Zooming in shows that the lines are there and that the new preview actually is much more precise:

VPE-3.1 at 300%




VPE-5-0 at 300%



but the older preview gives a better user experience. Even at 50% the lines appear as broken grey lines.

VPE-3.1 at 50%




VPE-5-0 at 50%



I assume VPE 5 tries to be precise and due to rounding and pixel distance lines appear or disappear.


raising linewidth from 1 to 3 improves the bahavior but results in thicker lines on printout and I want them to be as light as possible.

As I now have the provessional-Version I could draw light grey solid lines in the preview and send dotted ones to printer but I'd prefer another solution.


Any Idea on this?


Thanks in advance


Kind regards from Berlin

Frank Dietrich

[IDEAL Software Support]

We agree that the loss of the line style is a problem. It is related to a problem in the Windows GDI (Graphics Device Interface). We found a workaround right now, which will be incorporated into the next release v6.0 of VPE - shipped in about 2 months. This version will display styled lines for any zoom level.

What we can not reproduce is the problem with disappearing lines. Please create a VPE document file from your document and e-mail it to our support e-mail address for examination.

[DDTech]

We agree that the loss of the line style is a problem. It is related to a problem in the Windows GDI (Graphics Device Interface). We found a workaround right now, which will be incorporated into the next release v6.0 of VPE - shipped in about 2 months. This version will display styled lines for any zoom level.

OK, thanks for the reply. I'll see what I do meanwhile. Maybe really a Preview / Printout split. Should be quite easy to implement in this case as those lines are drawn in a separate method.

If You like me to test a pre-Release, inform, please feel free to inform me as soon as it's available.

What we can not reproduce is the problem with disappearing lines. Please create a VPE document file from your document and e-mail it to our support e-mail address for examination.

Sure, I'll make one ready for You.
It might be due to transparent / not transparent settings that are constantly changed during build.

Thanks and Regards


Frank Dietrich

[IDEAL Software Support]

Update: After receiving the sample files, we can confirm that with the new workaround the problems with missing dotted lines in the preview is also gone. So all problems are solved.

[DDTech]

As an instant workaround with the Professional-Version at hand, two lines can be created, one for printout and one for preview.

The following works for me:

Code: Select all

*-- draw a line for printout -> dotted
oVPE.Viewable = .F. 
oVPE.Printable = .T.
oVPE.SetPen(1, PS_DOT, <color>)

*-- and a second one for preview -> solid but thinner and brighter
oVPE.Viewable = .T. 
oVPE.Printable = .F.
oVPE.SetPen(0.6, PS_SOLID, <color2>)
...

*-- cleanup
oVPE.Viewable = .T. 
oVPE.Printable = .T.
 

[IDEAL Software Support]

Thanks for the info. I'd like to mention that this is Visual FoxPro code.