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Re: Re: Problems about Graphics

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg51988] Re: [mg51915] Re: Problems about Graphics
  • From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
  • Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 02:08:11 -0500 (EST)
  • Reply-to: jfultz at wolfram.com
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 02:17:07 -0500 (EST), MuTsun Tsai wrote:
> Urijah Kaplan wrote:
>
>> MuTsun Tsai wrote:
>>> I used to paste the graphics generated by Mathematica on my reports
>>> written
>>> with Microsoft Word, but I also have two problem :
>>>
>>> 1. The graphics always become bigger than it is in Mathematica
>>> notebook, and I'll have to resize it to 85% so that it will looks just
>>> the same size as it is in Mathematica. But at the beginning as I used
>>> Mathematica there's no such problem; I can't remember exactly when
>>> this problem first happened.
>>>
>>> 2. The curves are not as smooth as they should be. No matter what I do
>>> there's always sawtooth with it.
>>>
>>> What should I do to solve those problems? Thanks!
>>>
>> 1.Are you sure the magnification is 100%?
>>
> Yes, quite sure.
> I'm not sure if the problem is due to the different using of DPI between
> Word and Mathematica, as Word is using 96DPI but Mathematica is 72DPI.
> It's the only possible cause I can come up with.

That is certainly a plausible explanation, except for your claim that the 
problem has not always happened.  In fact, I suspect it has always happened 
to you. You could, of course, set the magnification to compensate, but I 
won't pursue that much further since my answer to your next question 
negates this as an issue.  The differing DPI issue, incidentally, won't go 
without review in future versions of Mathematica, but I'm not prepared to 
say anything more at the moment.


>> 2.Select the graphic, then Edit->Copy As->Metafile and paste it into
>> Word.
>> You can also Export[] the graphics as Windows metafile format (.wmf).
>>
> I've tried that, but the metafile it exports already has sawtooth on it.
> Of course it's not that obvious on the screen, but it does after printed
> out or as I zoom in on the screen. I don't know why can't mathematica
> just generate some smoother metafile.

Try magnifying the graphic to a much larger size, copying and pasting into 
Word, and then resizing it down in Word.  Mathematica samples the metafile 
at screen resolution, which generally looks pretty good when scaled up by a 
factor of two or three.  But, the resolution of modern printers tends to be 
four to eight times screen resolution, and so artifacts can creep in.  For 
example, the points describing a curved line, when sampled at screen 
resolution, may begin to describe a line with artifacts when those 
down-sampled points are then multiplied by large numbers (which is all 
metafile scaling does).  By sampling those points at a larger size, and 
thus a finer resolution, then scaling down, you compensate for this 
somewhat.

A future version of Mathematica will sample metafiles at 300% of the 
current magnification which, according to my tests, tends to take care of 
nearly all visible artifacts when printing the graphic out at the copied 
size (you could, of course, introduce artifacts by then increasing the size 
of the metafile in Word dramatically, then printing, but one must draw the 
line somewhere).

Sincerely,

John Fultz
jfultz at wolfram.com
User Interface Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.



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