Titles disappearing in ODS PDF Activex

[Kastchei]

Hello,

I am having a problem with my titles disappearing when I output a gplot to a PDF using Activex as the driver.

Outputting to HTML looks fine, and outputting to PDF with gif or jpeg works fine. When doing both PDF and Activex though, the titles simply do not appear on the page. Furthermore, if I add the titles using ODS PDF TEXT, the plots are put on a new page from the titles, doubling the number of pages of the PDF. Specifying startpage = never in my ODS PDF statement forces the plots on to the correct pages, but again hides the titles.

Is it possible that the background of ActiveX is simply opaque and hiding/colliding with the titles or ODS PDF TEXT?

Any suggestions on how to fix?

Thanks!

[sbb]

Share info about your SAS version, operating system environment, and ideally some of your SAS code for feedback.

I did a search on the SAS support website http://support.sas.com and found a SAS note stating that ACTIVEX is not supported on IBM mainframe (MVS or z/OS) platform:

http://support.sas.com/kb/10/401.html


Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[Andre]

I am surprised you are using activex with pdf!
Activex is linked with microsoft products
You may associate this with IE and Office.
so much more with rtf and html destinations than the pdf one

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/graphref/59607/HTML/default/a002329278.htm

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:
I'd recommend the JavaImg driver or the Java driver versus ActiveX or ActxImg -- RTF and PDF are different than HTML in the treatment of images. The image is "grabbed" at the time of file creation and converted to internal PDF or RTF format, while for HTML, a pointer <IMG> tag is built that specifies the physical location of the graph file.

The difference in 9.1.3 between the "client side" drivers like Java and ActiveX is that they use the ODS style template for their color and font settings; while the other drivers, like GIF, JPEG, etc, use internal GOPTIONS values and SAS/Graph defaults for their colors and fonts.

Starting in SAS 9.2, all SAS/Graph drivers will use ODS style template information unless you explicitly turn off the use of ODS styles with an Options statement.

This document http://support.sas.com/techsup/technote/ts659/ts659.html recommends the SASPRTC or Java drivers (in section B). I believe this was written before the JavaImg driver was available. I have actually used the ActxImg driver without difficulty in PDF, but I've not tried the ActiveX driver. It does make sense; however, not to use a driver/technology that's specifically associated with Microsoft when you're creating a PDF file.

Some other links of interest:
http://support.sas.com/kb/19/331.html
http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi28/094-28.pdf
http://support.sas.com/kb/24/305.html

And I think it worth emphasizing that in this link that Andre provided:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/graphref/59607/HTML/default/a002329278.htm it explicitly says that:
When you use the ACTIVEX device driver with an ODS statement that does not enable interactive output, the output is automatically changed to the PNG image that is generated with the ACTXIMG device driver. For example, the ODS PDF statement generates output for the Adobe Acrobat Reader in Portable Document Format (PDF). This format does not enable embedded ActiveX applications. Specifying the ACTIVEX device driver with the ODS PDF statement generates a PDF output file that contains a static image in PNG format.

There is the possibility that when this conversion takes place (from ActiveX to PNG to internal PDF format) something could be out of place with the resulting image.

cynthia

[Kastchei]

Thanks for all the advice. I tried JAVA and JAVAIMG, but both these had the same issue as ACTIVEX with removing the titles plus other unwanted changes. I did try SASPRTC like the articles mention. It works fine, though the graphs are not a pretty as with ACTIVEX. I think once I embed more fonts for SASPRTC to use, it'll be the best solution.