View Full Version : Re: Metafile Import


Jim Gordon
07-31-2003, 02:17 AM
Hi

I'd be willing to bet that Sigmaplot is setting a flag instructing that the
graph be rotated. The flag is probably ignored in Windows, but Office Mac
is following the instructions and is rotating it. If I am right, then the
cure is for Sigmaplot to fix their code and not set the rotate flag unless
they really want the image rotated. You might want to check with their
support people and alert them to this problem. Some future version of Office
for Windows may catch up and rotate and get the same results you are seeing
now.

Yes, if you use Virtual PC and a Windows version of Office that doesn't obey
the rotate command then it won't rotate.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

All responses should be made to this newsgroup within the same thread.
Thanks.

About Microsoft MVPs:
http://www.mvps.org/

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----------
In article <7882ea6a.0307300754.4f81be6f[at]posting.google.com>, iota[at]gmx.de
(Markus) wrote:


>
> System Specs: 12" PB, 640MB, Mac OS X 10.2.6
> Office X.V including the service pack 1
>
> Hello,
> I'm trying to use my powerbook in a PC environment, hence I have to
> do a lot of file exchange with PC systems running Office XP or Office
> 2000 for Win.
>
> We are using a special graphing program (Sigmaplot 6, info at
> http://www.spss.com/sigmaplot) on the PC to generate professional
> looking (hopefully ;-0) graphs and figures for scientific
> presentations. Here is the problem:
>
> Sigmaplot is only installed on the PC. I make the graphs and insert
> them into Word or Powerpoint documents. Opening the same documents on
> the Mac in Office X.V (the graphs are importet as "metafiles", at
> least that's what it says) always seems to delete the axis title on
> the vertical axis. Accidentally I figured out how this happened:
>
> The vertival axis title in Sigmplot is "text rotated by 90 degrees"
> (to make it vertical...). The metafile routine seems to rotate the
> same text box in the different directions. So the axis is not really
> delected, but it is "rotated out of the picture". I tested this theory
> in different ways:
> - placing a "rotated text" in the middlle of the figure, it ends up
> rotated in the wrong way
> - writing the axis title the other way around (rotated -90 instead of
> 90), sure as h... the axis title shows up on my figure, however it is
> of course displaced.
>
> This makes Office X.V (and the PB with it) unusable for powerpoint
> presentations, which is of course one of the more important uses I
> have for it.
>
> I noticed there are several other post about metafile imports around,
> I wonder if they might have the same origin, i.e. that rotation of
> objects happen in the wrong direction and such...
>
> And of course, is there a fix out there?
> I know I could import all figures as bitmap graphics, but this is a)
> more effort and b) doesn't print properly (it always grey shades the
> white backgrounds). I don't think Sigmaplot is available for Mac,
> however if I run VPC and Sigmaplot in it would that help?
>
> thanx, markus

Markus
08-05-2003, 04:56 AM
Jim, thanks for the input. Just for clarification:
- Not the whole graph rotates, just a textbox which contains the axis
label for the graph.
- I know nothing about this, but if there exist "flags" to rotate
pieces of Metafiles then my problem is not that the textbox is not
rotated, the problem is that a "90 degree rotation" (defined in
Sigmplot) rotates 90 degree counterclockwise on the PC and on the Mac
platform it rotates 90 degrees clockwise. So, the Mac version rotates
the opposite way.

BTW, I wasn't able to post here for the last few days, anyone know a
reason for that?
It always gave me the error message that Google Groups doesn't
currently allow posting to microsoft.public.mac.office

thanks, markus

"Jim Gordon" <goldkey74[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<uo7HCnwVDHA.3232[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl>...
> Hi
>
> I'd be willing to bet that Sigmaplot is setting a flag instructing that the
> graph be rotated. The flag is probably ignored in Windows, but Office Mac
> is following the instructions and is rotating it. If I am right, then the
> cure is for Sigmaplot to fix their code and not set the rotate flag unless
> they really want the image rotated. You might want to check with their
> support people and alert them to this problem. Some future version of Office
> for Windows may catch up and rotate and get the same results you are seeing
> now.
>
> Yes, if you use Virtual PC and a Windows version of Office that doesn't obey
> the rotate command then it won't rotate.
>
> -Jim Gordon
> Mac MVP
>
> All responses should be made to this newsgroup within the same thread.
> Thanks.
>
> About Microsoft MVPs:
> http://www.mvps.org/
>
> Search for help with the free Google search Excel add-in:
> <http://www.rondebruin.nl/Google.htm>
>
> ----------
> In article <7882ea6a.0307300754.4f81be6f[at]posting.google.com>, iota[at]gmx.de
> (Markus) wrote:
>
>