General HydroStatics
Ship Stability Software
Command of the Week
(New or interesting aspects of GHS that you may not know about)

RUN PFEXPORT.WIZ


We heard from John Bonn again. He said he has absolutely no use for color in GHS reports. Furthermore, he could see no sense in messing with fonts, since they make practically no difference. He did not change his mind when informed that some of his professional colleagues make frequent use of the color mode.

We like John, and we take his advice seriously. Usually there's something quite valid in what he says. He went on to say that if we want to give users control over the look of reports, we should come up with a way to make them available in MS Word format.

We explained that we have never been in favor of that because: 1) having the report reside in a form that can be conveniently edited blurs the line between what GHS has produced and what subsequently may have been added or modified; and 2) the native GHS format is most efficient and produces graphs directly for the printer, which makes them look as sharp as possible (and their storage is far more compact).

John remained adamant. He said the one big advantage of having documents in MS Word is that they can be emailed and viewed by anyone since everyone has the software, and sometimes a contract will specify it. We reminded him about our free public print utility program that we created for that purpose. He said that would complicate deliverables and might be unacceptable.

Then we brought up the PDF option. Though GHS does not directly export a PDF, several PDF print drivers are available (CutePDF is an example). John said a PDF would not meet every requirement.

Finally we offered to let him try a "wizard" we have been working on that exports GHS reports.



John really got excited about that. He said he wanted to see the exported version of the report page that appeared in last week's COW.

So, John, in fairness to everyone (in case someone else wants to try it), below is a screen shot of the exported report page in MS Word.



Questions, comments, or requests?
Contact Creative Systems, Inc.

support@ghsport.com

USA phone: 360-385-6212 Fax: 360-385-6213
Office hours: 7:00 am - 4:00 pm Pacific Time, Monday - Friday

Mailing address:
PO Box 1910
Port Townsend, WA 98368 USA

www.ghsport.com

Click here for an index to this and previous COWs