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Re: Re: What should be a simple task....

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg100699] Re: [mg100667] Re: What should be a simple task....
  • From: "Nelson-Patel, Kristin" <knp at ll.mit.edu>
  • Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:39:25 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <h0nuoh$bhh$1@smc.vnet.net> <200906102111.RAA00618@smc.vnet.net>

Thanks! I've also seen the suggestion to go through Excel first, and
maybe Power Point will render the data layer instead of the preview layer.
I independently reached the conclusion that the problem is in fact Power
Point 2007 by noting that printing looks just fine.  I haven't had a
chance to try this technique, but will.

Someone also made the suggestion that I should just do all of my
presentations within Mathematica on principle. Trust me, nothing would
make me happier; but I'm not an island and my entire organization and
all of the people who pay us to do our work, use Power Point and want
their products in Power Point.  No one here is going to figure out how
to make my organization's chart templates and logos in Mathematica for
me, and being a full-time working mom of two toddlers, I'm not flush
with the personal time to do this at home either. I actually like my
workflow between the two programs, where I draw quick cartoons in Power
Point to illustrate rough geometries, cut and paste into mathematica,
do all of the technical development, modeling and analysis, and
documentation in Mathematica, and then move the results plots back
into Power Point where I can then "tell the story".  Maybe that was
more justification than was required, but I just don't think it's
realistic to impose a Mathematica-only workflow on the customer base.
The beauty of Mathematica is it's incredible flexibility and power--
people can apply it to literally anything they want in any way they want.
That should be honored in the way the company handles interface issues,
or the brand is undermined.

One reason I haven't gone to bitmaps, as others have suggested, is
that my organization really likes us to put our briefings through
a team of graphics people who work in Illustrator to make nit-picky
graphics changes. Those graphics people need (or at least say they need)
vector-based formats. Metafiles seem to work fine.  I think they'd prefer
EPS, but that really never worked well out of Mathematica. Oftentimes,
our management takes our briefings on the road and don't want to have to
come to us to fiddle around with our plots, so they want the graphics
people to be able to edit colors, thicknesses, etc, without wasting
technical person-hours on it unless they need a real substantive change.

It's all in the details!

Thank you all for your help. This has been quite useful.

-Kristin

-----Original Message-----
From: LBoogie [mailto:lwalker701 at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 5:12 PM
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
Subject: [mg100699] [mg100667] Re: What should be a simple task....

On Jun 10, 5:35 am, "Nelson-Patel, Kristin" <k... at ll.mit.edu> wrote:
> Hi :)
>
> I am an analyst (applied physics and math) who has to present all
> of my work in Power Point briefings, sometimes on paper, sometimes
> electronically. I vastly prefer working in Mathematica to another system;
> however, I'm currently ham strung by my inability to transfer simple
> plots from Mathematica 7 to Power Point 2007 in a way that looks decent.
>
> In previous versions of both, I was able to Copy As: Metafile by right
> clicking on the plot in Mathematica and Paste Special: Metafile in
> Power Point, and all would be well (Ok, I had to tweak line thickness
> settings and fonts in my plots to make them survive the transfer, but
> that was fine).   Now, I have select the whole cell rather than just
> the plot to get the Copy As: metafile option, and I have to go all the
> way to the menu bar to do it (no longer an option on the right click).
> Fine, I can deal with that, but I can't deal with the fact that my simple
> plots look completely ratty now upon pasting into Power Point.
>
> There's all this stair stepping in curves which should be smooth.
> I've played with the PlotPoints option-no effect. I've exported into
> different form ats with varying ImageResolution and imported; Either the
> fonts get screwed up or it looks even worse or there's ugly aliasing or
> no effect on the stair stepping.  I've exported to PDF and snapshot-copied
> from there; The curves look good, but now the whole image is just a littl
> bit blurry/soft, a little too much to pass muster with my supervisors
> and sponsors.
>
> I'm really getting frustrated now, have spent way too much time on what
> *was* a solved problem before my "upgrades", and beginning to suspect
> that the problem is some import or paste/display setting in Power Point
> that I can't reach.  I really don't want to have two different briefings
> for electronic vs. paper presentation, but I'm a little concerned that's
> where this is heading, or I'm going to have to use the other system to
> make my plots. Which would bea shame.
>
> Has anyone figured this one out yet?  Help, please-I'm crying uncle.
> This is one of those stupid simple problems that also happens to be
> quite fundamental to the ability to make good use of Mathematica.
>
> -Kristin

I confirmed some quality problems Kristin is talking about.  I tried
copying and pasting the Plot[x,{x,0,1}] graphic from Mathematica 7 to
Powerpoint 2003.

Experiment #1: First I selected the graphic (not cell) then right-
clicked to Copy Graphic.  Next, I pasted to a slide and noticed some
poor quality in the pasted graphic.
Experiment #2: First I selected the cell of the graphic -- converted
it to Metafile.  I noticed that the converted graphic in Mathematica
looks the same as the pasted Powerpoint graphic from Experiment #1.
Experiment #3: Repeated Experiment #2 except that I converted the
graphic to Bitmap.  Much better quality in the pasted graphic except
for some clipping at margins of the graphic.

I think the Metafile conversion utility (Powerpoint/Mathematica) has
some quality issues.

Can someone recommend a command to extend the margins of the graphics
to avoid clipping something important when the graphic is pasted?

Thanks,
Lawrence



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