Drawings for presentations & publications: some problems

User ba9c1b6fd4

13-12-2009 08:49:45

Hello,


this is my first post so let me congratulate you to this project. I have been playing around with IJC and Marvin and like this software.


Therefore it is quite obvious that I want to use Marvin to draw structures in presentations and publications. However, there are some problems that I encountered.


1. Suggestion for improvement:


It would be most useful for me to have an extended range of "default" settings for chemical drawings. I know that some things can be adjusted in the "Preferences". But, for instance, I have not found a way to adjust the font style at startup with the same grade of detail that is possible via the "Format" dialog. I am doing a lot of presentations and I have a clear idea what the atom symbols and structures should look like (arial, 14 pt, bold, etc.), and I would like to have these settings available right from the start. So it would be "cool" to have a file with "default" settings that is read on startup. There are these ".properties" files, but these must be read interactively. Is there any way to read such a file by default?


2. Suggestion for improvement:


On startup, the "drawing" tool is activated by default. It would be much better for my purposes if the selection tool would be activated, because I usually do not start from scratch. Is it possible to somehow make marvin "remember" the last setting? Or to determine this behavior in some other way?


3. Trouble with presentation/publication graphics:


The graphics are really fine. But when it comes to embedding, there is trouble. Please take a look at the attached file. I think that it is self-explanatory. It is annoying to have the color of the drawing change when it is embedded.... So, unfortunately, I can not use Marvin in the way I had planned, to draw structures for presentations and publications, if there is unforeseeable behavior.


Warning: I just noticed that I can not edit the marvin sketch within powerpoint on the other PC. Have done that successfully on another machine, but it will crash powerpoint on the other PC. :-(


Best regards


Christian Klein

ChemAxon 990acf0dec

16-12-2009 16:49:03

Hi Christian,


Thank you for your post, and apologies for the late respond. Please find my answers inline.









1. Suggestion for improvement:


It would be most useful for me to have an extended range of "default" settings for chemical drawings. I know that some things can be adjusted in the "Preferences". But, for instance, I have not found a way to adjust the font style at startup with the same grade of detail that is possible via the "Format" dialog. I am doing a lot of presentations and I have a clear idea what the atom symbols and structures should look like (arial, 14 pt, bold, etc.), and I would like to have these settings available right from the start. So it would be "cool" to have a file with "default" settings that is read on startup. There are these ".properties" files, but these must be read interactively. Is there any way to read such a file by default?



Actually, whatever you set on the Edit > Preferences > Display tab will be used as default next time. But it is really not as detailed as in the Format option. We file a feature request for this.









2. Suggestion for improvement:


On startup, the "drawing" tool is activated by default. It would be much better for my purposes if the selection tool would be activated, because I usually do not start from scratch. Is it possible to somehow make marvin "remember" the last setting? Or to determine this behavior in some other way?



I can imagine an separate group in the Preferences where you can change the default behavior to start with the Select tool when you open MSketch. We will file a feature request for this as well. Until that I recommend you to set a shortcut to change to the Rectangle Selection option, through View > Customize > Keymap (you can find the Rectangle Selection command in the Edit category).









3. Trouble with presentation/publication graphics:


The graphics are really fine. But when it comes to embedding, there is trouble. Please take a look at the attached file. I think that it is self-explanatory. It is annoying to have the color of the drawing change when it is embedded.... So, unfortunately, I can not use Marvin in the way I had planned, to draw structures for presentations and publications, if there is unforeseeable behavior.



This issue is related to how the EMF image created in Marvin is rendered in MS Office. We improved the EMF image creator engine a lot in the coming 5.3.0 version (to be released very soon), so the image will be always antialiased on the OLE object in MS Office documents, and every setting you made in the View menu of MSketch will be taken over to the MS Office document. I recommend you to try it again with 5.3.0 as soon as it is released.









Warning: I just noticed that I can not edit the marvin sketch within powerpoint on the other PC. Have done that successfully on another machine, but it will crash powerpoint on the other PC. :-(



To be able to edit an OLE object in an MS Office document, you need to have the corresponding software installed on the computer. It is not Marvin specific; every other pieces of software work on the same way.


Best regards,


Akos