Provide max diagram width/height

[Theo van der Donk]

Large diagram images are often larger than the page size of my document. This means that the bottom (or right) part of my diagram is not displayed by Word.

It would be great if a maximum image width and height could be provided, either on a per-document-base (one setting for entire document) or on a per-diagram-base (for each diagram, “annotate” it with the max width/height). Diagrams are then resized (made smaller) until they fit into the specified max dimensions.

[eadocX Support]

Good idea! And you’re not the first to ask for it!
Our challenge is that there is no API in EA to get a diagram in a form which we can manipulate – it’s just a big bitmap. We can’t even tell how big.
BUT
I have asked the Sparx dev team to make their re-size and page-split function available via the API, and, for once, they were quite encouraging.
I’ve looked at manipulating the diagram objects directly, but this is a HUGE task, as we’d be replicating loads of EA diagram function, so we’re all going to have to wait for Sparx to produce new APIs.

[Theo van der Donk]

This is not what I intend (I knew about this other post). What I want is to keep it one big diagram (no need to split it up); I just want that the word-properties of the image (width and height (in cm) in the document are adjusted. Word will then scale the image by itself; no complicated manipulations!

Example link where a similar thing is realized using scripting within word:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Microsoft-Word-1058/Word-resize-pictures.htm

[eadocX Support]

Ah – I see. Looks pretty easy then.
Where would you expect to specify what scaling is needed for a diagram? Somewhere in EA?

[Theo van der Donk]

Yes, it is rather easy — but powerful.

Where to specify the scaling, depends also on your opinion. It can be in EA (for example, as diagram tags), or it can be in eaDocX (diagram right-click, same place where you specify whether to include all elements or not).

I think I prefer the latter one, is this is more close to the document, and you control the GUI for this (instead of having to deal with tags).

While on the subject, perhaps other options like rotating the diagram 90/270 degrees makes sense and is easy to implement?

Regarding the scaling, my intention is to specify max width and height (in cm? or perhaps any other unit that word understands, for example, width = 80% of page width…?), instead of a “scaling factor” as referenced in the article (but, perhaps word also understands scaling factors, so the user can choose whether to enter “12cm” or “80%”, and word understands it. If I look at the dialog in word, you can choose “absolute” and “relative” scaling. For relative you can specify the ‘reference’ (for example, relative to page). For the amount, you can enter every value (just text field), so “12 cm” or “80%” should perhaps all go fine.

It may also be useful to have a checkbox to keep aspect-ratio (which I would normally like), but maybe for other purposes aspect-ratio should not be kept constant.

I do not want to make it too complicated for you with all of these options, but it may be easier to implement them all at once instead of having to expand the functionality in an incremental way.

[eadocX Support]

Still not sure about this, but your approach looks good, with a good selection of options. I will consider this for a future release (after 3.3)

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