Scales and resizing.

[Szkielzu]

Originally Posted by Laurence Finston

It should be no problem to take sections from an image and save them in separate files with GIMP. You can save them in EPS format or some other one.

Another possibility is to modify the method I suggested and print portions of the scaled image on separate pages. It's no problem to shift the image so that part of it goes off the page. If this is of interest to you, I'll explain how to do it, unless it's already clear.

this is not a bad idea actually, only problem is that it would take me a lots of time to do that, i have a number of 1/100 models
thanks!

[Laurence Finston]

I think that was "no thanks" but I'm not quite sure. Anyway, you're welcome and it's perfectly straightforward, if you decide to try it. The \hss and \vss commands are what makes it possible for things to go off the edge of the page. For example,

\vbox{\vskip15cm\hbox{\15cm\epsffile{myfile.eps}\h ss}\vss}

causes there to be 15cm skips at the top and left sides, below and to the right of the margins, if any. It doesn't matter how big the image is. If it's too large to fit, it will go off one or both edges of the paper and not cause an error. A printer's PostScript interpreter won't care; it will only print what fits onto the paper.

If you want the image to go off the paper at the top or left, just put the \vss and/or \hss at the beginning instead of the end. That is, after '{' instead of before '}'.

[Szkielzu]

Originally Posted by Laurence Finston

I think that was "no thanks" but I'm not quite sure. Anyway, you're welcome and it's perfectly straightforward, if you decide to try it. The \hss and \vss commands are what makes it possible for things to go off the edge of the page. For example,

\vbox{\vskip15cm\hbox{\15cm\epsffile{myfile.eps}\h ss}\vss}

causes there to be 15cm skips at the top and left sides, below and to the right of the margins, if any. It doesn't matter how big the image is. If it's too large to fit, it will go off one or both edges of the paper and not cause an error. A printer's PostScript interpreter won't care; it will only print what fits onto the paper.

If you want the image to go off the paper at the top or left, just put the \vss and/or \hss at the beginning instead of the end. That is, after '{' instead of before '}'.

that "thanks" was honest don't worry ^^
my idea is to try and adapt these models to re-scaling in Paint.Net (no, it's not ms paint, it works like Gimp) and then i would conver them into pdf files

[Laurence Finston]

I was sure it was sincere, I just thought my suggestion wasn't what you were looking for, but I wasn't quite sure. It's perfectly okay to say "no, thanks" to something. I wouldn't be offended.

There are probably lots of packages you could use for rescaling. One advantage of my method, as I see it, is that you don't have to rescale the image and save it in a file. \epsfsize and \epsffile will take the image and scale it to whatever scale you want (within reason). Another advantage is that the paper size is "automatically" correct. It's easier to fit the image on the page and shift it around then it would be in, for example, GIMP, at least for me. I think you could solve the entire problem just with GIMP or some other image manipulation program; I just don't know how to do it.

[Szkielzu]

Originally Posted by Laurence Finston

I was sure it was sincere, I just thought my suggestion wasn't what you were looking for, but I wasn't quite sure. It's perfectly okay to say "no, thanks" to something. I wouldn't be offended.

There are probably lots of packages you could use for rescaling. One advantage of my method, as I see it, is that you don't have to rescale the image and save it in a file. \epsfsize and \epsffile will take the image and scale it to whatever scale you want (within reason). Another advantage is that the paper size is "automatically" correct. It's easier to fit the image on the page and shift it around then it would be in, for example, GIMP, at least for me. I think you could solve the entire problem just with GIMP or some other image manipulation program; I just don't know how to do it.

nononono i had a different idea, to take some parts from one sheet to the other, convert them both to pdf, and then re-scaling it so it wont cut out elements

[Laurence Finston]

That's similar to the first alternative I suggested: Take sections from the original image and put them on separate pages. The difference is that you can only include EPS files in TeX using the epsf macros, so one has to convert any image to EPS for this to work. However, that's no problem with GIMP and probably with lots of other programs, too. PDF was designed to be compatible with PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript isn't much different from "standalone" or "structured" PostScript.

I'm not trying to convince you to do it this way; I just want to explain how it would be possible.

[Szkielzu]

Originally Posted by Laurence Finston

That's similar to the first alternative I suggested: Take sections from the original image and put them on separate pages. The difference is that you can only include EPS files in TeX using the epsf macros, so one has to convert any image to EPS for this to work. However, that's no problem with GIMP and probably with lots of other programs, too. PDF was designed to be compatible with PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript isn't much different from "standalone" or "structured" PostScript.

I'm not trying to convince you to do it this way; I just want to explain how it would be possible.

...only problem is that i don't know what EPS, TeX and other stuff are, i'm sorry

[Laurence Finston]

Oh, that's easy to fix! EPS is Encapsulated PostScript. It's a format for graphics files that can include text using PostScript fonts. It's just like normal PostScript, except that the file includes information for the bounding box of the image, which is needed, if you want to include the file in another document.

PostScript and PDF are related. PostScript is a page-description language for printing. Many printers have processors that contain a "PostScript interpreter". PDF, on the other hand, was designed for sharing files, particularly via the internet. When you send one to a printer, it's converted to PostScript for printing. It's easy to convert PDF to PostScript and vice versa. Therefore, it's no problem for GIMP to convert a PDF file to an Encapsulated PostScript file.

TeX is a program for computerized typesetting. It's available for free for just about every system one is likely to have. TeXLive and MikTeX are two distributions. It's no problem to install and use but admittedly a little complicated. However, one can use it to produce results of the very highest quality, especially if it contains mathematical text.

DVI ("device-independent") is the format of the files you get by running TeX. So, if you have a file containing the commands I showed, and some other necessary ones, running this:

tex myfile.tex

will produce the DVI file myfile.dvi. Then, dvipdfmx myfile.dvi converts myfile.dvi to myfile.pdf.

epsf is a "macro package" that supplies the macros \epsfsize and \epsffile. It's not really necessary in this context to know anything more about them, one just uses them as shown.

[Laurence Finston]

I thought I'd go ahead and make an example.

The file sphrmd03.pdf contains plans for a model of mine. It's from here: The GNU 3DLDF Sphere and Dome Models Page

The image s4.pdf shows page 4. It's in DIN A3 portrait format (297mm x 420mm). The image itself is an EPS file which I created using GNU 3DLDF and MetaPost. However, that's irrelevant in this context, an EPS file generated any other way will work just the same way.

The file sphrmd03_a4_mag_test.pdf contains the image from page, but in DIN A4 format and scaled by 1.41429. It doesn't fit on the page, but is shifted around on consecutive pages so that different parts of it can be printed.

The images s_a4_1.jpg through s_a4_5.jpg show the individual pages of sphrmd03_a4_mag_test.pdf. I converted them to JPEG using GIMP.

The TeX code is in the file sphrmd03_a4_mag_test.txt. The PDF file is created like this:

tex sphrmd03_a4_mag_test.txt
dvipdfmx sphrmd03_a4_mag_test.dvi