Author Topic: Azure Icons print with black background (Read 8019 times)

Sunshine · « **on:** November 07, 2020, 10:26:49 am »

I've raised this with Sparx Support. Just letting you know there seems to be an issue with any Azure icon that has a transparent background when printing. It comes out with a black background so differs in appearance to what is shown on the screen.
Makes the printed diagram look a pretty ugly.

Uffe · « **Reply #1 on:** November 07, 2020, 05:55:00 pm »

Hi Sunshine,

I remember seeing something similar to this, transparent icons which showed up black when generating documents and/or copy/pasting.
As I recall, this was affected by the clipboard format. So it might be worth playing with that (preferences - general).

HTH,

/Uffe

Sunshine · « **Reply #2 on:** November 08, 2020, 03:10:04 pm »

Thanks for tip Will investigate

Sunshine · « **Reply #3 on:** November 09, 2020, 05:45:44 pm »

So tried changing the clipboard format. The clipboard format was set to Bitmap so I changed it to Metafile but alas made no difference.

Sunshine · « **Reply #4 on:** November 20, 2020, 06:00:28 am »

Raised a bug with Sparx EA a few weeks ago but other than an automated response I've heard nothing. Unusual as Sparx support are usually quite good a responding after raising a bug.

KP · « **Reply #5 on:** November 20, 2020, 10:02:50 am »

Just been chatting with our graphics expert. He says we can only do transparencies with bitmaps, not metafiles, so clipboard format has to be set to bitmap. And if you're using the print function, a lot will depend on printer drivers etc, so your best bet would be to save diagrams as PNG or PDF and then print that.

Martin_Bohring · « **Reply #6 on:** December 23, 2020, 07:43:19 pm »

I don't think this can be the final answer to this issue.

First:
The Azure Icons are a brand new Feature and are completely useless for document generation by now.
(Especially if you give the documentation to external Stakeholders. Looks very non professional)

Second:
Why clipboard format settings should be related to printing totally escapes my imagination

Third:
@Sparx You render those meta files. So why it should not be possible to render those on top of a diagram in a transparent fashion is a mystery to me.
Either you have some "very" legacy code rendering the diagrams or you use an external library that you should get rid of.

In either case this cannot be the final answer in the year 2020. Leave your legacy behind. It is already an uphill battle to establish proper modelling against PowerPoint and Visio. With BS like this it is a loosing game.

Geert Bellekens · « **Reply #7 on:** December 23, 2020, 11:05:42 pm »

I think you misunderstood something.

You need to the change the document generation options to use Bitmap instead of metafile.
Then it works as you would expect.

Press F8, go to Options, and set Diagram Format to Bitmap

Now the azure icons are generated to the document including their transparency.

Geert

Martin_Bohring · « **Reply #8 on:** December 24, 2020, 01:00:39 am »

Hi Geert,
thanks for the clarification.
That defuses one of my "frustration" / rant points

(The second one about the Clipboard).

I am testing the latest Sparx EA Release (15.2.1556) right now and some bugs still get me enraged / heated up.
(e.g. SysML IBD diagrams and their layout problems. Or printing problems in general)

Or the fact that updating to a newer version still manages to kill the layout of existing diagrams
(despite being locked and visually frozen)

A happy Christmas to all Sparx Users and Employees

Geert Bellekens · « **Reply #9 on:** December 24, 2020, 01:31:53 am »

In fact the latest version actually is 15.2.1557 (released today)

One of the bullets of the release notes reads:

Quote

Restored previous behavior for showing types and compartments for SysML diagrams to prevent layout changes

So that might be a fix for one of your issues.

Geert

PS. I wouldn't get so worked up about these bugs. You won't have any hair left soon if you let each bug bother you so much

ea1020 · « **Reply #10 on:** March 05, 2021, 04:12:37 pm »

A) Cool; I'm glad EA has added icons for Azure
B) On my screen, none of the icons show up. I have the boxes, arrows and words. But when I add the "Azure Example 2" model into my project, none of the icons are displayed. I had a look at the diagram properties and the properties for one of the icons, but I don't see any obvious issues. Any suggestions?

Geert Bellekens · « **Reply #11 on:** March 05, 2021, 04:25:01 pm »

Did you import all of the icons first using the new model wizard?

Geert

ea1020 · « **Reply #12 on:** March 06, 2021, 03:19:41 am »

@Geert:

Did you import all of the icons first using the new model wizard?

Thanks Geert. After I added the "Microsoft Azure icons and images" model to my project, all works correctly.

Sparx Systems Forum

News: