MapInfo Pro

Do you wish you could use more line styles in the layout window? We are looking for input about which line styles are most important to you.

If there are specific line styles that you need, or styles you don’t need, please let us know. Please reply with the style column letter / row number combination that is shown in the line style dialog. You can access the map version of the dialog to see all of the line styles from Spatial > Style > Line Style. Then open the Style dropdown.

See Attachment

Thanks in advance for your input.

Rows 1-17 contain all the lines I have ever used and probably will use.

Ad van O.

?I would like to see exactly the same line styles (and colours) for layout use as used in the map window.

And I would like to see the layout inset scale bar box stay filled with a white background.

At present my layouts refuse to keep the scale bar box background filled, or any other box for that matter (eg text boxes) - I am still using Version 16 at present.

I agree to the comment of Peter Lefel: "I would like to see exactly the same line styles (and colours) for layout use as used in the map window."

@Peter Lefel? and @Helmut Hoppe?, does this mean that you from time to time are using all of the many different line styles?

We are trying to understand if there are some of the line styles that are more important than others. We were basically wondering if we could solve say 80% of the cases by supporting the first x number of line styles.

The end goal is to support all.

Thanks

@Peter Lefel? as for the scale bar, the floating layout scalebar is supposed to be transparent all the time. We have however seen a number of cases where it on screen seems to have white back ground but mostly when printed it will be transparent.

I'd currently recommend added a white rectangle behind the scalebar to keep the white back ground.

If you insert the scalebar using the Map Adornment (MAP, Add to Map, Scalebar), you can specify a back ground style, either transparent or full colored.

Hello Peter Horsboll Moller,

I am using many different lines styles to depict various data on Planning Scheme maps and Infrastructure Plans. Note I said maps - not graphics - whole of Shire (28000 sq kms) A0 maps at 1:330000 scale. Total count 34 x A0 maps.

In some instances, I am manually creating a legend in the layout due to the fact that the PDF writer (does not matter which flavor of PDF writer I use) does not treat the symbology in the auto generated legend the same way that it depicts the map data?, basically the auto generated legend does not look like the map data in the PDF. This causes some angst amongst the target map users. The manually created legend does, but because of the limitation on the type and number of line styles available in the layout window, my workaround legend is built in a separate map window and placed in the layout with another frame. 

In regards to the layout scale bar, due to the complexity of the data shown on the various maps, the transparent layout scale bar can be hidden by the amount of data on the map, so I use the layout box to create what I thought was a white background, so that the scale bar is highlighted. I will now stop attempting to change the properties of the scale bar box to white.

I have already instigated the workaround you mentioned - "recommend added a white rectangle behind the scalebar to keep the white back ground."

Thanks

Peter

Can't understand why you would only support some and not all linestyles?

The layout (Layout Designer, not the classic Layout window) uses different technology for drawing than the map does. The map (and the classic Layout) are Win32 based and use GDI/GDI+ for rendering. The Layout is WPF based and it has a completely different way of rendering. So unfortunately we cannot easily provide support for all of the original map line styles.

That's why we are asking for your input to determine if you use only a subset of the line styles or if you do need each and every style.

Ideally we would support all styles. However, some of the more complex ones (especially from rows 20+) are trickier to support.

Regarding the legend quality... We have been working on improving the appearance of the legend samples. The first version of legend designer and legend frames in the layout designer were created by generating raster versions of the style samples. Over time we have made some improvements such as:

• drawing TrueType symbols as TrueType (not rasterized)
• minimizing the anti-aliasing of the raster style swatches to produce crisper, less blurry results

Related to these style changes, we are also looking at improving the quality of the legend swatches (for the styles that we can draw in the layout window). This has not happened yet. It is related to this new style work. So that should cut down (or hopefully) eliminate the need to manually create your own legends.

But these legend changes are related to the upcoming layout style work. So it would be good to know which styles you do or do NOT need.

Regarding the scalebar background issue... We are aware of the issue and have contacted Microsoft. At this point we don't have a solution and it seems to happen intermittently. So it is best to use Peter's suggestion for creating a white rectangle in the background.

@Alicia Levesque? Has there been any progress with this issue? Has it moved into development?

Now experiencing this problem as I move more users over to v17. We have standard legend which appears on layouts so I have used line style direct from an old layout workspace. I've now had to create a jpg to insert the image with the correct style as a temporary work around. We are using B2, C7, B14 & D14 to display the various types of Public Rights of Way.

James,

Thanks for passing along information regarding the specific styles that you use/need.

We are doing research right now and believe we will be able to support all of the styles in a future release.

Thanks again,

Alicia