Metafile Structure - One object or several?

PeterSJC · Post by **PeterSJC** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 8:31 am

What is the structure of the metafile that the Edit|Copy|Picture command puts into the clipboard? When I paste it into a drawing program (Antechinus Draw Magic) or into Microsoft Word, it appears to have only one object. On the other hand, I am almost certain that yesterday I pasted a DPlot graph into Word and somehow was able to select axis labels and individual lines of the watermark, but I cannot now duplicate that. As you saw from my other posting, I am a rank newby at this, and obviously very confused.

It would be really nice if the metafile created by DPlot could have enough different objects to let the user "post-edit" it (e.g., move labels, change their font, change plotting symbols, move tick marks from one side of the axis to the other, etc.) for final publication. The idea of editing an output file is inherently ugly, but that's the sort of thing people do to get their work out the door, and it might be a reasonable alternative to trying to build all possible options into DPlot.

Cheers,
Peter

Post by **DPlotAdmin** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 1:38 pm

DPlot copies both an enhanced metafile and standard metafile to the Clipboard. Both formats consist of individual drawing commands, and you should be able to edit either format in a graphics editor - but I've seen a lot of inconsistencies here. For example I can right click on either an enhanced metafile or standard metafile pasted into MS Word and edit individual components (Word also screws up rotated text when you do this, and it's certainly not meant to be a good graphics editor). On the other hand PowerPoint, which is all about graphics, will allow me to edit a standard metafile but not an enhanced metafile pasted from the Clipboard.

You might have better luck saving your plot to an .emf or .wmf file and then importing that file into your editor. If that doesn't work, try copying to the Clipboard and then using your editor's Paste Special command (assuming it has one) and picking the standard metafile rather than the (probably) default enhanced metafile.