Re: st: Re: st: RTF issues.

[Rebecca Pope <rebecca.a.pope@gmail.com>]

Jeph & Roger,
I can't answer the question about fixing the size of the graphic in
RTF, but I can offer solutions to the enforced use of MS Word as a
precursor to obtaining a PDF and to Word altering the import size of
graphics.

1. My husband is a tech writer & he introduced me to Scribus (open
source alternative to Adobe InDesign, which to be fair I should also
mention as an option) to make PDFs. If you are composing your text in
Word, it can be copied directly into Scribus & then you can add your
graphics there. Indeed, you can compose in any text editor or even in
Scribus itself. Thus, you can bypass Word altogether if you want.
Scribus imports graphics with whatever dimensions you've saved them
but you can edit freely after that. You'll get better results in terms
of resolution with the .eps files Roger mentioned.

2. If you are working entirely within MS Word and you want to
constrain the size of the graphic before you import it, you need to
insert a "drawing canvas" that is the dimensions of the existing file
and then "fill" that canvas with your picture rather than importing
the picture. I'm not sure that is any better than just importing the
graphic and changing the size ex post. The one major advantage that I
see is that you can put the canvas in as a place holder while you are
adding your text and then insert the images after you've composed the
text. My experience with MS Word is that it is rather crash-prone if
you are moving text around with a large number of images. Either
method will give you poor resolution because of the format of the
graphic you are constrained to.

Hope this helps,
Rebecca


On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Jeph Herrin <stata@spandrel.net> wrote:
> I always archive figures in GPH format, but I will see how .eps looks
> compared to .emf; I find .tif and .png to have poorer resolution when
> embedded, at least when converted to PDF, for some reason.
>
> cheers,
> Jeph
>
>
>
> On 1/7/2013 4:03 PM, Roger B. Newson wrote:
>>
>> Now you mention it, this is something I too would like to know. I
>> personally tend to use the .eps format, but the code generated by
>> -rtflink- does not preserve the specified sizes for that, either. The
>> only recommendation I can think of is that, in general, the definitive
>> version of a graph should NEVER be in a Microsoft proprietary format. I
>> personally view all Microsoft documents as ephemeral things, which I
>> only produce because my non-technical customers want them.
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>
>> Roger B Newson BSc MSc DPhil
>> Lecturer in Medical Statistics
>> Respiratory Epidemiology and Public Health Group
>> National Heart and Lung Institute
>> Imperial College London
>> Royal Brompton Campus
>> Room 33, Emmanuel Kaye Building
>> 1B Manresa Road
>> London SW3 6LR
>> UNITED KINGDOM
>> Tel: +44 (0)20 7352 8121 ext 3381
>> Fax: +44 (0)20 7351 8322
>> Email: r.newson@imperial.ac.uk
>> Web page: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/nhli/r.newson/
>> Departmental Web page:
>>
>> http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/about/divisions/nhli/respiration/popgenetics/reph/
>>
>>
>> Opinions expressed are those of the author, not of the institution.
>>
<snip>
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/