Formating before printing

TreeDraw Standard Edition and TreeDraw Legacy Edition; our genealogy charting software.

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Steve Austin
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:30 pm

Formating before printing

Post by Steve Austin » Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:41 pm

I would appreciate some advice on laying out my tree before printing. I have a fairly large tree that when imported using a 10 point Arial font comes in at 10 pages by 2 pages A4.
I am trying to reduce this size so that it fits into a clipboard frame 70cm x 100cm, which equates to 3x3 landscape or 4x2 portrait. I need to keep the 10 point font. If I scale to fit 3x3 landscape the font is reduced to 4 point.
I have spent ages grouping and moving the original as much as possible, but this is very cumbersome and still ends up cluttered and confused. The question is / is there an easier way to achieve what I need or have you some advice to enable me to get the results I need.
The programme is very good for smaller trees in PDF format which I have used on my web site, but I would like to produce a printed framed tree.
Many thanx
Steve :)

laschapas
Posts: 74
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:48 am
Location: Derbyshire, UK

Post by laschapas » Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:46 am

Hi Steve,

To get more people per page you have to reduce the information about each person and/or reduce the detail on each entry. In the options the date can be displayed as long as Thursday "5 February 2008" or shortened to "5 2 2009" or even just the year. Use the replace text section to replace county names ie. replace "Yorkshire" with "YorKs", or use replace text to remove the county completely if everyone who will see the chart will know that say Northallerton is in Yorkshire. Replace "Street" with "St". Try different fonts, some fonts look correct for an ancient document but need to be larger to be easily read. If you leave out the box round the person details you save space but you still eed white space round each person to separate the details from the adjacent person. Pick one family to import and try all the above ideas as you import the same family again and again to the same test file, you can then decide which is the minimum acceplable format you are happy with. I hope this helps,

John

Steve Austin
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:30 pm

Post by Steve Austin » Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:24 pm

Hi
I am sure your suggestion will help, but as I have now suceeded in getting my tree into a 70x100 cm clipboard, I will attempt to answer my own question.
As I first starting off with two font sizes 10 for the name and 8 for the other details, this produced a 4 point font when I scaled to fit (landscape 3x3).
So I increased the font sizes to 26 Bold for the name and 20 point for the other info.
This brought in the tree / spread over 3x3 pages landscape. Which is what I wanted.
Before it was at best 3x2 landscape.
Even starting with 26 point the scaled to fit version was only now 8 point and 5.
So I then went in and altered all the font sizes individually and carefully.
Always start with a saved version and then continue to save after each alteration (when satisfied). Always ungroup and then find the box around the text you require ( this box is now big presumably because it contained a bigger font). Reposition the corrected text and repeat. You can regroup again when satisfied.
I hope I have described this OK ???
Now how do I work out the margins ?
I want connecting lines that run over to another page to BUTT up. So
What is the actual size of an A4 sheet reduced to if I keep the default margin settings.
What is the minimum margins I can use ?
What is the largest size sheet of A4 I can keep without trimming.
Or do I always have to trim ?
I intend to trim if nessasary with a sliding blade thingy.
Ps When altering the font size you can abbriviate as Laschapas suggests.
Steve

Graham Hadfield
Posts: 43
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:05 am
Location: Middlesbrough, UK
Contact:

Post by Graham Hadfield » Fri Feb 06, 2009 8:55 am

The actual size of an A4 sheet, minimum margins and, consequently, largest size sheet of A4 will depend on the minimum settings within the printer you actually use - they all tend to vary.

It is likely that you will always have to trim.

As regards butting up, the extent to which you achieve a match will, again, depend on your printer. There always tends to be a little lateral movement in the printer feed which leads to slight differences in line-up. The effect is magnified the larger the chart is.

Graham

Steve Austin
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:30 pm

Post by Steve Austin » Fri Feb 06, 2009 10:59 am

Hi Graham
The problem I had with trimming was that if connection lines are say in the middle section of a tree, then for them to meet the lines on the other pages ie Top, bottom, Left , Right -- then this page would need to be trimmed four times. Then all the other pages have to be cut to the same size (to match).
Looking for a far simpler way to overcome this, I just decided / to place the A4 printed sheets together and to use a black pen and a ruler.

I hope this is of use to others as I bought the programme to produce a printed tree, and have found PDF files very good, but producing a large printed version a bit of a hassle.

Steve

Graham Hadfield
Posts: 43
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:05 am
Location: Middlesbrough, UK
Contact:

Post by Graham Hadfield » Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:10 am

Yes, Steve, I know what you mean about trimming. I've certainly been there in the past and I'm sure others have had the same experience :)

Producing a large printed version (i.e. larger than whatever page size is available) throws up the same hassles whatever program is used - though IMHO TreeDraw suffers less than most because of its versatility and the ability to ensure that only lines (not data) occur at page edges.

The only real solution to printing large charts is to use a printer which can handle paper large enough.

Graham

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