Hi,
When I export to EMF, it seems the file has an embedded bitmap and no vector. I’ve imported to Inkscape, Xara Designer Pro and IrfanView, all show blank. It shows the image when opened with MS Paint (Windows 10).
Am I doing something wrong? Would you like an example file uploaded?
Hi @Belleson, I just tried in v1.202 and it seems to work. From the main screen, right click on the graph, select “copy to EMF” and then paste it into word. And zoom in as far as you can. Text remains very sharp.
Can you see if that works for you too? Sounds like it does with MS Paint. Which suggests the programs you are using don’t support EMF paste??? I just tried with Affinity and it doesn’t paste the EMF either.
TL-DNR: I’ve convinced myself that QA403 analyzer is exporting a blank EMF with embedded full size bitmap “thumbnail” of a waveform.
I don’t use Word and don’t have it installed, so unfortunately I can’t do that sanity check. I may be able to test by emailing a saved file to my wife.
This page confirms my theory that QA is saving a EMF file with an embedded bitmap: “EMFs (Enhanced Metafiles) let you save both vectors and bitmaps within them.” Also this Stack Overflow page.
Note that Windows Explorer preview does not show a preview of QA EMF export, only blank. Yet QuickLook (see below) shows the picture.
I tried a different sanity check with these applications:
Dia – a pseudo-Visio for block diagrams
Inkscape
Xara Designer Pro 19 – Adobe Illustrator equivalent priced for middle class people
Diagram Designer – another tool for diagrams, great for quick schematics as vectors
MS Wordpad (Win10 version)
IrfanView - graphic viewer
QuickLook – Windows explorer add-on to view most anything using space bar
Exported EMF from Dia and successfully imported to Inkscape and Xara, pasted to Wordpad
Exported EMF from Diagram Designer and successfully imported to Inkscape and Xara, pasted to Wordpad
Exported EMF from Xara and successfully imported to Inkscape, viewed in IrfanView, pasted successfully to Wordpad
Thanks,
– Brian
I had links to all the apps but got an error message
Hi Brian, I copied two images from the QA403 main display: One as EMF and one as bitmap. I pasted each into Word, rotated and aligned so that you could easily compare the same corner. Then I exported to pdf
I opened in Chrome and zoomed to max. You can see the upper rotated image is pristine, while the lower image (bitmap) has the jaggies. I also opened pdf in Affinity (Adobe Illustrator-esque for $89) to confirm and saw similar.
Matt, yes the upper graph shows a yellow trace in multi-angled segments, where the lower one shows pixelated horizontal and vertical segments. I imported this PDF into Xara and the upside down graph is in vector pieces, the lower one a single BMP. However, the text in the vector one is made of shapes, not font characters; not sure if that’s due to the original export, the paste to Word or the print to PDF.
I was able to email a QA403 EMF to my wife and import into Word. It shows angled segments that would not appear in a bitmap (“diamond” shaped rather than square with the grid). So I’m no longer convinced it’s showing a big bitmapped “thumbnail.” Just confused why preview does not show in Explorer or the files don’t import into most of my graphics apps. Maybe dotNet puts some proprietary stuff in?
Hi @Belleson, I think this is the nature of EMF: When Windows GDI renders, it’s well past the strings of text and font stage. EMF is rendering just arcs, lines, ellipses, polygons, etc. But it is vector. And that’s what EMF is: a snapshot of the vector rendering very late in the pipeline.
I think the correct export for future software (v2, date unknown) will be svg. If Word isn’t your primary target, then I think the fallback to PNG makes sense.
Last time I faced this issue, I exported data points from QA403 as CSV, imported data into Graph to recreate the plots, then exported that to SVG.
That makes sense and I read similar info elsewhere. However, when I export EMF from other apps then import into Inkscape or Xara, the fonts come in as editable text. Quite puzzling!
