Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi all,

I'm having problems copying and pasting simple shapes from draw. If I draw a rectangle at .5pt, copy it, and try to paste it into paint, only the left and top side are visible. If I increase the line width, the bottom and right sides are visible, but thinner than the left and top. The same thing happens when I try to save the rectangle as an image.

Ultimately, I just want to save a couple of text boxes (with text) as images to insert into a publication. The text comes out fine but I can't figure out why the borders aren't uniform.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

I believe this is a long-standing problem with exporting content from OO Draw. The only workaround I know of is to include an invisible (or background color) shape behind all the shapes you want to export. You can size this object to provide whatever border is desired.

Thanks for the response, acknak. If no one else has another suggestion, I guess I won't be able to use OO for what I want.

Why can't the software for creating that publication be AOO? Without the export intermezzo the borders of your text boxes would printed fine - and they would be editable in situ if need be.

Thus using Draw and exporting shapes comes with unavoidable disadvantages anyway. If an urgent need requires this proceeding I only can offer a not so elegant workaround. If I hear your frenetic applause after your glances at the attached mspaint-drawing, I will tell you how I made it.

I don't have an audio file to share with you, but I assure you that I am applauding. I need to export because the journal requires separate image files for diagrams. They have to be high quality though, so I don't know if Paint will cut it. I think I've found another application that lets me produce suitably cropped PDFs, but I am interested if it is easy for you to describe what you did.

Thanks both for your replies.

It's really primitive, but rather well usable based on an example shape that can be copied and reused under resizing. You find everything you need in the attached example. Hope, it didn't just work satisfyingly on my system. But I'm afraid there will be a dependence on resolution that may spoil the prints. Printing can even work better with the untweaked shapes.

Exporting objects directly to file should yield better quality image files than copy/paste via Paint.

• Select the object/components to save.
  File - Export ...
  Tick the "Selection" box below the filename.

Internal Draw objects are vector data. Converting to bitmap makes quality loss very likely.
If the journal will accept vector graphics, EPS is perhaps the best candidate for professional printing.
SVG could also be an option, but check the output thoroughly before submitting.