Diagonal lines in boxes

spotty61 · Post by **spotty61** » 28 Feb 2010 13:14

Hi I hope someone can help me.

I am using Family Historian 3.1.2. 4 weeks ago, I linked 6 photos into my tree for the first time. All seemed well until I printed the diagram. Most (but not all) females had a diagonal line across their box, regardless of whether they had one of the pictures or not.

The Print Preview on screen did not have the diagonal lines.

I have since removed each link to the 6 photos, but the photos remain in their original folder. Today I printed a page from a new diagram which does not contain any of the people who used to have a photo. Most, but not all, females have either a single-line or a double-line inside their box, going from North-west to South-east direction (and some have both the double & single line). The Print Preview is fine.

Help!!

ID:4382

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 28 Feb 2010 14:56

I am not clear what the issue is could you do a screen shot so we can see.

JonAxtell · Post by **JonAxtell** » 28 Feb 2010 15:00

Have you tried printing out the photos using your photo viewing program, e.g. Irfan, ACDSee, Picass, or even MsPaint? Sounds like it might be a problem with your printer.

spotty61 · Post by **spotty61** » 28 Feb 2010 21:01

I don't think that a screen-shot would be helpful because the screen display is perfectly fine with all as it should be. The diagram only shows the problem when printed.
I have just tried using a different text format in the diagram (ie one which I have not tweeked), and the diagonal lines are still printed. They only occur on females and some female boxes have both single- and double-lines.
I have tried to attach a jpg photo (166kb) of the un-tweeked results, but the upload keeps failing (do you know why?).

PeterR · Post by **PeterR** » 28 Feb 2010 21:24

Have you tried 'printing' to a PDF file? This facility is built into FH v4 but a separate PDF creator can be used for earlier versions.
See: http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id ... f_creators
I used to use PDFCreator until I upgraded to v4. If the diagonal lines are not present in the resulting PDF file when viewed on screen, they probably won't be present on the printed version either.

If only female boxes are affected, are they a different colour from male boxes? Does changing the colour make a difference?

If the PDF file has the diagonal lines, it would certainly be interesting if you could upload a screen capture of an affected box.

spotty61 · Post by **spotty61** » 01 Mar 2010 21:00

How can I upload a sample of the print? I have tried both .jpg & .gif types and every time I get the message 'Upload failed' but with no reason given. Is there maybe a maximum file size? Is 166kb too large?

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 01 Mar 2010 21:45

I think the level is around 80Kb, try a .png file or reduce the quality a bit.

spotty61 · Post by **spotty61** » 02 Mar 2010 16:14

At Last! I think I have uploaded a sample of the report in question.

PeterR · Post by **PeterR** » 02 Mar 2010 17:37

I presume the image above is a scan of the printed output? If so it could be a problem with the printer or the printer driver. This is why I asked (above, 02/28/10 - 21:24:00) whether the diagonal lines appear when 'printing' to a PDF file.

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 02 Mar 2010 17:52

I suspect peter is correct, could you try changing the box shape on the female boxes to square corners, and see if the problem goes away.

spotty61 · Post by **spotty61** » 02 Mar 2010 20:34

Progress. The problem appears to be with rounded boxes. Square boxes, stepped boxes, bevelled boxes are all OK.

Rounded corners on both male and female boxes (either one sex at a time or both together in a diagram) produce the unwanted lines. The lines appear singly, or 2 or 3 or even 4 lines parallel and very close together and slanting NW to SE. One test I did with females in rectangular boxes and males in rounded boxes with 0.08 corners printed the usual diagonals in 3 males, a horozontal line at the top and bottom of their text (never had horizontal lines before) in 4 males, and no erroneous lines at all in the remaining 5 males.

I suspect that the linking of photos was a red-herring (I have just printed a page including 2 people linked to photos & all is well). However, for more than a year, rounded boxes have caused no problems at all when printed using the same laptop & printer as I currently use.

So what has happened to the specification for rounded boxes? And should I just get used to not using them any more (though that is less than satisfactory)?

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 03 Mar 2010 07:01

I suspect it could be that your printer driver has been updated, as you are using 3.1.2 that has not been changed in the last two years.

I would try printing via a PDF printer, see
[wiki]aboutother_nonfh_software:pdf_creators[/wiki] for some recommended free ones

spotty61 · Post by **spotty61** » 04 Mar 2010 19:46

Thanks very much for your help & advice - I will check out the PDF idea.

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