Basic question- Visio to Frame

[Steve Rickaby]

At 05:07 -0700 30/5/08, Rene Stephenson wrote:

>Of course, I solicit "best practice" information from all parties on this list, so please don't hesitate to tell me where we're screwing up.  ;-)

I don't think you are, Rene, you've found what works for you and gone with it. Folks are correct in principle in saying that a vector graphics format such as .eps is preferable for line art, and that dumping to PDF and importing that into FrameMaker can often avoid a lot of problems. However, a large high-resolution TIFF scaled down on import may well give you the graphics quality you require. The acid test is, as Richard Combs commented, to look at the final PDF of a sample graphic under high magnification. As you mention SnagIt, I would also say that TIFF is our preferred format for screen grabs.

I can echo the various reports about the poor quality of output from the various filters that come with Visio from personal experience. In the past we have had to resort to extensive retouching (in Illustrator) of Visio .eps and .wmf files: typical problems included arcs and circles that had been interpreted as multiple straight-line segments, objects moving their locations and general lack of precision of placement, as if the format translation had been done with insufficient mathematical precision. Some stuff coming out of Visio was really bad, but the native Visio diagrams looked fine.

-- 
Steve