Saving graphs as pdf

[Dag Kolsrud]

When making graphs, they look the same in EViews 12 and 13. But I have to use EViews 12 when I save (print to disk) the graphs as pdf to get the same look in pdf as in EViews. If I use EViews 13 and save the graphs, the lines get a different and ugly look as pdf. Is that due to EViews or Windows?

[EViews Steve]

Some screenshots would be helpful.

[Dag Kolsrud]

I have enclosed two screen shots of two spools generated by the same EViews program written by me. The only difference is that the program generating the spools was run on two different versions of EViews: EViews 12 and EViews13. Each spool was saved on disk by the manual EViews menu operations Object->Print->Printer: Microsoft Print to PDF. The resulting pdf-files are also enclosed. The pdf-files show all graphs in the spools, not only the graphs in the screen shots of the spools displayed in EViews.

The graphs are ok in the spool and pdf file generated by EView 12, but not in the spool and pdf-files generated by EViews 13. In the latter, the dashing is different (and missing in Fig 2.17) in the spool, and looks terrible in the pdf. In the pdf the lines are missing in the legend.

I wonder if the problems could be due to EViews using functions in the Windows operating system differently in the two versions 12 and 13. I am looking forward to your answer.

Sincerely, Dag

[Dag Kolsrud]

One spool did not make it into the previous reply

[EViews Steve]

As mentioned in a previous post, EViews 13 has a new opacity setting that defaults to being ON which might be the cause of your dashed line problem.

Try turning off opacity for your graph line to see if that fixes it.

Code: Select all

mygraph.setelem(1) lineopacity(off) 'turns off line opacity

[Dag Kolsrud]

Unfortunately, the command lineopacity(off) does not change anything. Do you have any other potential explanation or do I have to continue doing the graphing in Eviews 12?

[EViews Steve]

Did you turn off line opacity for each line in your graph? My code was only meant to be an example, but your graph seems to have multiple lines. If you still can't see any changes, please send me an EViews workfile and program that can reproduce the error you're seeing. Once I can replicate the issue, I'll look into fixing it.

[Dag Kolsrud]

Please find a workfile and a program that graphs series in the workfile. The program can be run by EViews12 and 13, but it is necessary to comment/uncomment lines to (de)activate the OPACITY command which only EViews 13 accepts.

[EViews Steve]

Thanks for the info. I was able to reproduce the issue you're seeing. I'll take a closer look to see if there's a fix or a workaround.

[igor]

Interesting example. Try fillopacity(off) instead of lineopacity(off) for the first two lines.

[EViews Steve]

I've confirmed the issue seems to remain, even after using both fillopacity(off) and lineopacity(off) for all graph elements.

Visually, it seems like the dashes are scaled too large on the PDF, even though they look fine in the graph window. Changing the dashed-line type to a larger dash makes the problem even more pronounced in the PDF.

For now, I think you'll have to make do with the PNG output instead. We'll try to address this issue within the next few weeks.

[tvonbrasch]

I wanted to check if there have been any updates or fixes regarding the PDF export issues with dashed lines and legends in EViews graphs. Is there any new information on when this might be addressed?

[Dag Kolsrud]

In Statistics Norway we try to use Eviews as much as possible for building, maintaining and using a large macro model, and also for producing tables and figures/graphs. Unfortunately, after EViews12, we experience problems with graphing and have to use EViews12 to get dashed lines that look good when saved to disk (as pdf files) (se previous entries in this tread). When I try to replace dashed lines (for forecasts) with solid lines with the same color/hue but lighter tint (than the historical series), both get the same color. If I try to give them different colors, they still get the same color:

if !eviews_versjon = 12 then 'EViews12
{%gr}.setelem(1) linecolor(@rgb({%color1})) linepattern(solid) legend(%serie1) axis(l) linewidth(!valuta_linewidth )
{%gr}.setelem(2) linecolor(@rgb({%color1})) linepattern(DASH1) legend() axis(l) linewidth(!linewidth)
{%gr}.setelem(3) linecolor(@rgb({%color2})) linepattern(solid) legend(%serie2) axis(r) linewidth(!valuta_linewidth )
{%gr}.setelem(4) linecolor(@rgb({%color2})) linepattern(DASH1) legend() axis(r) linewidth({!linewidth})
{%gr}.setelem(5) linecolor(@rgb({%color3})) linepattern(solid) legend(%serie3) axis(r) linewidth(!valuta_linewidth)
{%gr}.setelem(6) linecolor(@rgb({%color3})) linepattern(DASH1) legend() axis(r) linewidth(!linewidth)
else 'EViews14
{%gr}.setelem(1) linecolor(@rgb({%color1})) linepattern(solid) legend(%serie1) axis(l) linewidth(!valuta_linewidth )
{%gr}.setelem(2) linecolor(@rgb({%color2})) linepattern(solid) legend() axis(l) linewidth(!linewidth)
{%gr}.setelem(3) linecolor(@rgb({%color3})) linepattern(solid) legend(%serie2) axis(r) linewidth(!valuta_linewidth )
{%gr}.setelem(4) linecolor(@rgb({%color1})) linepattern(solid) legend() axis(r) linewidth({!linewidth})
{%gr}.setelem(5) linecolor(@rgb({%color2})) linepattern(solid) legend(%serie3) axis(r) linewidth(!valuta_linewidth)
{%gr}.setelem(6) linecolor(@rgb({%color3})) linepattern(solid) legend() axis(r) linewidth(!linewidth)
endif

Why can we not format the line type in EViews 13 and 14?

[EViews Gareth]

Do you have a simple example we can examine?