Multi-Page Legend Options

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Bob

OnePager 5.1, as we’ve mentioned in previous posts, includes new multi-page capabilities.

We’ve added the flexibility to control (1) whether the legend is inside or outside the graph area, (2) whether the legend is fixed at one of these 8 predetermined points or a predetermined distance from them and finally, (3) whether the legend appears on one or more or all pages.

First, let’s take a look at the updated Legend tab of the Project View Properties form. Each of the updated areas are called out below.

The legend position section of the tab allows you to select if you want your legend in a predetermined spot or “dock” and the radio buttons control which dock you have chosen. There are four additional legend positioning options in the dropdown, as shown and explained below:

1. Anchored to page – Place the legend at a distance from a fixed reference points (one of the eight predetermined positions and maintain this distance on all pages where the legend is displayed.

2. Docked to page – Place the legend at one of eight predetermined positions along the edges of the page.

3. Docked to graph – Place the legend at one of eight predetermined positions along the edges of the graph. The “graph” is the space that contains all the tasks and milestones, excluding row labels, swimlane labels, time axis annotations, margins, headers, footers, and title.

4. Free Floating – Without using any of the predetermined positions, use drag and drop to place the legend at an arbitrary location with respect to the graph or page.

We can picture the page as a harbor and the graph as an island in the harbor and the total of 16 predetermined positions as 16 places to park your boat as shown in the illustration below:

To make it more clear, we will use a sample project views, however, we will go in a different order of explanation this time for the sake of simplicity.

1) Docked to page: The example “Print Preview” below of a 2 X 2 configuration the legend in the upper right corner of each page in the project view where the right margin is made larger for illustrative purposes:

In the “Print Preview” of the four page document with the “Docked to page” option, the legend remains in the upper right corner of the page on all four pages. The legend itself does not change dimensions.

2) Docked to graph: The example for “Docked to graph” a 2 X 2 “Print Preview” below that places the legend in the upper right corner of the (blue) graph area on all four page project view:

3) Free-floating: The “Free-floating” option is the ultimate in flexibility but may provide for inconsistent results with multi-page outputs. As mentioned above, this option is without any docking or anchoring at all and depends on where you place the legend manually. As an example let’s take a 2 X 2 project view as shown below:

Notice how the legend moves around in the right margin from page to page. It doesn’t remain where you intended it to be except on page 2 above. This is because OnePager is trying to keep the legend in a position relative to the two page breaks that define each page, while also keeping the legend on the page.

4) Anchored to page: The “Anchored to page” option when compared to the “Free-floating” option discussed just above will provide better results in the multi-page situation described above because the anchoring forces the legend center to maintain the same displacement from a reference location on every page.

To show an example, let’s create a 2 X 2 page project view with the margins expanded and the legend positioning option set to the “Anchored to page” option.

Above we see that all four pages of the document have the legend positioned consistently in the same relative position. Subsequent movement of the legend in the Normal or Page Break view modes will correspondingly reposition the legend on each of the multiple pages.

Finally, it is important to note that anchoring achieves page-to-page consistency for non-margin locations too. However, being in a page-consistent location within each page is no guarantee that the legend does not obscure some tasks and milestones on some of the pages. In practice, margin locations for the legend are the safe bet for consistent legend positioning in multi-page.

Further down in the Legend tab is the Show legend on section which has two options as shown here:

There are two radio buttons. The first, All pages will ensure that the legend will appear on all pages in the report.

When the Pages radio button is selected, you have the option of telling OnePager which pages should show the legend.

Using the Page Layout Options with OnePager 5.1

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Bob

This article will show you how to make fine adjustments using the Page Layout tab of the Project View Properties form in OnePager 5.1.

After you’ve created a multi-page project view and perhaps looked at it in Print Preview Mode (Page Layout tab), you may want to make detailed changes to certain aspects of your new multi-page document. This can be done from the OnePager project view editor by going to the Home tab and clicking on the Project-View Properties button. Once open, you can navigate to the Page Layout tab per the illustration below:

The Page Layout tab above has a complete set of controls similar to what you would expect to see when getting your document ready to print.

Let’s take a look at the project view based upon the current settings above. This is how it would look in Print Preview mode:

As you can see, the project view above will correspond to the settings in the Project View Properties Page Layout tab. Now suppose we want to change this to a three by one (3 X 1) page configuration, repeat the time axis on each page, and place the legend on page 1. The necessary changes Page Layout tab are circled below:

And when the three changes shown in the red ovals above are applied, the project view will look like this in Print Preview View mode:

The Project View Properties dialog box is there in the project view editor to give you those fine levels of control you need to create the desired Gantt Chart that meets your schedule communication objectives.

For more detailed information on these controls and others, please consult the OnePager User’s Guide which is available at the Chronicle Graphics website or accessible from the Help menu of the OnePager application itself.

Changing Page Sizes with OnePager

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Bob

OnePager has always been able to support output of pages of various sizes. Version 5.1 of OnePager makes selection of your page size easier with the Page Layout tab on the ribbon:

OnePager 5.1 automatically gets your list of available page sizes from Windows and provides them in the convenient dropdown. Simply click on the Page Size button and select your page size.

When you are ready to print your project view you have two options for accessing a Print Preview: on the Page Layout tab, or by selecting the Print option from the File tab. Within the File tab, you have another opportunity to change the page size by clicking on the Settings button:

At this point you may make changes within the Project View Properties form’s Page Layout tab, or simply accept the Page Layout settings by clicking OK, and then click the Print key above to produce a printed copy of your project view.

OnePager handles all the scaling and positioning of the project view on the page. Look for more blog posts in this space on how to configure the time axes, rows and swimlanes, titles, headers, and footers on multiple pages, a single page, or selected pages.

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Monthly Archives: August 2014

Multi-Page Legend Options

Using the Page Layout Options with OnePager 5.1

Changing Page Sizes with OnePager