MapGuide RFC 124 - Fusion QuickPlot enhancement

This page contains an change request (RFC) for the MapGuide Open Source project. More MapGuide RFCs can be found on the RFCs page.

Status

RFC Template Version	(1.0)
Submission Date	06/15/2012
Last Modified	Ted Yang 06/26/2012
Author	Ted Yang
RFC Status	Draft
Implementation Status	not implemented
Proposed Milestone	2.4
Assigned PSC guide(s)	Bruce Dechant
Voting History
+1	-
+0	-
-0	-
-1	-
no vote

Overview

This RFC is trying to enhance the Quick plot function in Fusion. To get a precisely control of the print elements such as paper size, DPI, margin and so on, this enhancement will render the map as a PDF document and leverage the PDF Reader’s powerful print functionality.

Motivation

The web browsers’ print capability has a lot limitation, for example it’s difficult to control the page size and margin. At the meantime, different browsers print the same web page in a different way. Due to the limitation of web browser print capability, Quick Plot cannot offer a "precise" plot solution, it’s not possible to "precisely" control the

• paper size
• print margin
• image resolution
• and so on

This issue makes Quick Plot almost useless to the customers who are sensitive with the print precision. This enhancement will solve these problems.

Proposed Solution

This enhancement will only be implemented in Fusion Viewer. In the current Quick Plot Widget, add Page Orientation and Margin options to the GUI, when user clicks the “Generate” Button, the preview will be shown as a PDF document. A php library “TCPDF” will be added in the fusion, which has been discussed in the MapGuide Internals(​http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/TCPDF-based-plot-solution-td4553444.html#a4647804). The “TCPDF” will be used to generate the pdf document for print. Then users can use the PDF Reader’s print function to finish the print.

Implications

This is an enhancement of the original Quick Plot, the GUI will keep the same with some additional parameters; the print preview will show in a PDF viewer. If user doesn’t install any PDF application, then a PDF document can be saved.

Test Plan

N/A

Funding/Resources

Supplied by Autodesk.