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Scribus => Layout Issues => Topic started by: johngold on April 17, 2015, 10:09:05 PM

Title: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: johngold on April 17, 2015, 10:09:05 PM
Ran into a problem with black borders missing on tables when printed, even though i can see the borders in  print 'preview'.

I created  4 x A6 tables on an A4 format with ample margins around each table (the final A4 print being cut into 4 A6 pages to be used in a ring bound booklet). When i first printed out a draft everything was fine. Black borders (from the rectangular shape facility) appeared around each table.

From the draft i needed to make some minor size reductions to the tables. Using the blue highlight from the red margin I reduced the size of the tables using a corner 'reduction arrow'. When i came to print the A4 sheet again i had lost most but not every black border round the tables.

I saved the file, closed it and opened it again, but once again the borders failed to print even tho they show in print preview. I also deleted the black rectangular border of some of the tables and created another one, but this too failed to print.

Any ideas?
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: utnik on April 19, 2015, 12:39:41 PM
hi johngold

i don't understand what you're doing.
could you provide an examole file of the sort that works and one that doesn't?

are you printing from .pdf or from .sla?

utnik
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: johngold on April 19, 2015, 09:13:12 PM
Hi Utnik,

Will provide a file that doesn't print some of the borders in due course. Printing is from .sla files.

I managed to get round the problem by exporting files to Photoshop where I was able to print out ok.

John g
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: utnik on April 19, 2015, 10:01:34 PM
hi john

the usual way of printing scribus files is to export to .pdf and print from a .pdf viewer.

utnik
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: johngold on April 20, 2015, 08:34:29 AM
Hi Utnik,

Thanks for the update.

A .sla file attached and a png (exported from scribus to photoshop). I use photoshop to reduce the size of the A6 tables, which appeared to create the problem in the first place in Scribus. However, as previously indicated, the png export in photoshop prints out fine but not directly from the .sla file where there are missing black borders and loss of other shade detail in the boxes.

I have done this before without any issues, so no doubt a mistake on my part?

John g




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Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: utnik on April 20, 2015, 09:35:08 AM
hi john

i took a short look at your .sla file – don't know, why some of the black lines are missing.
if you only need a gray area (like the gray frames in your table) i recommend to set the shade to 20% instead of the opacity. if you place the shaded frames below the vertical black lines it looks the same, but there's no transparency involved. i'm not sure if a part of your printing problrm is related to transparency...

utnik
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: GarryP on April 20, 2015, 02:09:58 PM
John, I'd be tempted to make these tables in LibreOffice/OpenOffice Calc instead of Scribus (then export from Calc as PDF to be imported into Scribus if necessary). There are way more table formatting options in Calc; it's table-based software after all.

It also has the added advantage that you already have somewhere you can copy the written form information to if you need to store it digitally.

It's not a very "Scribusey" suggestion but it's worth thinking about if you've got lots of tables to do.
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: johngold on April 20, 2015, 05:39:39 PM
Hi Utnik & Garry,

Many thanks to you both for your suggestions. Forgive the pun, but looks like I've stumbled into a bit of a 'grey area'.
At least there are ways around the issue.

Cheers again

John g
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: Nermander on April 20, 2015, 06:47:02 PM
Missing lines can sometimes be a scaling issue. A line that is 1 pixel wide and then scaled to 99% will be less than one pixel wide, and then it can't be printed "to scale" and is discarded.
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: johngold on April 21, 2015, 04:00:50 AM
I think this problem i encountered does have something to do with scaling of the tables, but I am also left wondering why is that the lines that went missing were the outer black bold lines that should, in theory (or maybe not) be thicker in width. I presume also that the exported file as a png retains detail and so prints fine in photoshop?
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: Nermander on April 21, 2015, 08:10:07 AM
It's a bit the same thing as what makes font hinting necessary.

A PNG is bitmap, bitmaps are hard to scale.

Imagine you have an image that is 10 pixels wide and you are printing it scaled so it will have to be printed 8 pixels wide. 10 pixels can't be scaled to 8 pixels, some pixels will have to be discarded or combined.

You should use vector formats (PS, EPS, SVG etc) for easy scaling.
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: johngold on April 21, 2015, 09:03:49 AM
Many thanks Nermander. I will try out the vector formats you suggest.
Title: Re: black borders not appearing on tables when printing
Post by: utnik on April 21, 2015, 10:30:03 AM
Quote from: Nermander on April 21, 2015, 08:10:07 AMYou should use vector formats (PS, EPS, SVG etc) for easy scaling.

...or the scribus standard export format – .pdf...