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Atlas Printing Woes


Lorinda H. M. Hoover

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I've been making extensive use of the Interactive Atlas as I'm teaching my way through David's life. Each week I put together a custom map showing the locations of the places mentioned in our reading, and print it. (We're not set up for projection in the room where I teach).

 

However I'm really struggling to print off a map that fits on a page and doesn't create overlapping labels. With patience, creativity, and prolific use of the Print to PDF feature, I've managed most weeks. But this week I've hit a wall. I need to print a much "taller" map than usual, from Tyre in the north to Beer-sheba in the south. And the map includes a lot of towns around Jerusalem.

 

I figured out I could print it on legal sized paper this week, but I can't get the window tall enough to do so with the resolution I need to avoid overlapping names around Jerusalem. (I'm working on a 13-inch Macbook Pro)

 

Any ideas?

 

Ultimately what I'd like to see is a more sophisticated ability to select an area to print or copy. Right now, you can select an area and copy it, but once you've selected an area, you can't tweak the boarders of the selection, nor can you select past the edge of the window (i.e. it won't scroll as you select).

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Lorinda, have you checked the Scale Graphics to Page option in the Print Settings dialog? (It's in the File menu). That may help if you haven't.

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Thanks for the suggestion, David. Unfortunately that didn't help me any.

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Which map layers are you using? A screenshot might also help.

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Screenshot attached. The only layer I'm using is a custom sites layer with the cities I'm interested in.

 

Lorinda

post-407-0-55328600-1323802946_thumb.png

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Okay, that helps. I would recommend you go into the Define Custom Layer dialog for that layer and try changing the font and scaling. If you absolutely can't avoid any overlaps, you could try creating a compilation of two maps: one which shows the relationship among Tyre, Jerusalem, and Beersheba, and a more focused one which shows that cluster of towns around Jerusalem.

 

Hope this helps.

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Thanks, David. Adjusting the scale helped considerably. I just hope my (mostly older) students can read print that small.

 

I do hope that some improvements can be made to the Atlas features at some point. It would help those of us who create a map and want to export it, whether to print, slide, or other documents.

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It would be fantastic if we could get the Atlas to "export" a multi-layered document that could be edited and adjusted in a vector graphic editing tool like OmniGraffle, VectorDesigner or Inkscape.

 

If that's a pipe dream, what about exporting a "Full size" image with just the points (i.e. no city labels or polygon layer labels) to allow us to do fine tuned text placement elsewhere?

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Mike, you can do the latter right now, though it's not an export option. You can edit each layer you're displaying on the map and simply hide the labels. You'll end up with a map with dots, lines, shaded areas, etc. but no text. Then you can add the text in a graphics program.

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