IslandDraw-FAQ

Tricks and Problems with IslandDraw

1. Known tricks for special effects
2. Pitfalls

1. Importing IslandDraw frames into PowerPoint applications
   IslandDraw frames which are to be imported into PowerPoint applications have to be specially prepared in IslandDraw prior to storing them as eps-files. The actual frame has to be placed to the upper left corner of of IslandDraw's plotting area. Then the white bordering has to be minimized using "options/setup" and suitable values for "width" and "height". "Apply"ing the requested modifications and saving the data as "IslandDraw/uncompressed" and "Other Format/eps" will generate (hopefully) an eps-file.

   An eps-file gives the best image quality results in PowerPoint (because it can be freely scaled without quality loss), but you might prefer for some reason to have it in jpeg-format. You may use Ghostscript ("gs") for this purpose. The following setup has been found to yield satisfactory results:

   gs -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=jpeg -dJPEGQ=75 -r300x300 -sOutputFile=file%03d.jpg file.ps

   (the term "%03d" has been used here to generate multiple jpeg-files if the input file contains more than one frame).

1. Setup IslandDraw for DIN A0 poster printout
   When creating poster size documents with IslandDraw, users tend to forget to correctly setup IslandDraw for printout. You should always check whether the page layout in the Options->Setup widget is consistent with the appropriate File->Print->+ widget layout for the "Printer Paper Size". You should also backcheck how your IslandDraw file will be put onto the paper sheet(s) by using the preview-option, prior to really sending the output to the printer.