I’ve just started using Agenda, and it’s been great. I want to use of the PDF export feature to send lesson agenda notes to students. However, in testing the feature, sometimes after exporting to PDF a second page is created with only one line of text on it. Sometimes the second page is just blank. Then I have to either edit my note to hopefully fit it on one page or go in with a PDF editor and try to delete a blank page—extra steps. It would be great to be able to manipulate the page break before exporting to PDF. Maybe a page break indicator could look similar to an unobtrusive horizonal rule (dotted?). It could be vertically movable within a note from the standard letter height breakpoint to wherever the user chooses to place it. It could be toggle-able as well.
This starts to get a bit messy, I’m afraid. Agenda is not a WYSIWYG editor like Microsoft Word. The same note looks completely different on different devices. So trying to introduce pagination would be very difficult.
I think the best bet is if we simply try to make the PDF generation smarter.
Does this just happen if the text is almost the size of a single page? I assume it is just when it spills over to the next page. Correct?
I figured that pagination would be a feat. I have found print preview on desktop to be somewhat helpful before exporting–still hit or miss though.
“I think the best bet is if we simply try to make the PDF generation smarter.” –That sounds like a good option.
“Does this just happen if the text is almost the size of a single page? I assume it is just when it spills over to the next page. Correct?” –That is correct. When the content is near or just past the size of a standard letter size page, either a single line of text is pushed onto an additional page, or an additional blank page is generated.
I miss this option too. Regularly i create dokumentations for Work with text and pictures, often i need much time to prepare the dokument for exporting to PDF, so that the PDF looks clear and structured for the client. The option “page break” would be perfect for those tasks.
I reported this problem in June 2020. Drew investigated the issue at the time, and I was told that it would be addressed down the road. It was suggested that I open the file in Preview and delete the blank page. That solution did not work for me. I guess this is why I gave up trying to email PDFs from directly from agenda. If this was fixed, I would be appreciative.
We have since changed our PDF generation to use Apple’s native generation. So we have less control over this now, but hopefully something that works more like one of Apple’s apps.
I guess this problem is simply that you get an empty page if the content is just a little bit bigger than the available space, right? What is your proposed solution? Exclude the page somehow if we can somehow determine it is empty? Or introduce some sort of orphan detection so that the whole last paragraph moves to the next page?
Drew
If a single line appears on the last page - I do not have a problem with this. If the last page is going to be blank, do not include it in the PDF. At first I thought that I must have a series of newlines at the end of a document. But this was not the issue.
Fred
. . Stay safe and be kind
Is there anyway for the editor to have a toggle to “show” where a page break would be for the selected paper size?
Just as an information we can use when writing notes.
That’d help immensely.
It’s pretty tricky, because Agenda is not a WYSIWIG (What You See IS What You Get) editor, like say Pages or MS Word. Those apps are designed to look exactly like what a printed page would look, and can insert page breaks.
Agenda adapts text to the size of the window and device etc, so what you see is not what prints. What is printed depends on many different factors, like page size etc. So it is very difficult to determine where a break would happen, and Agenda isn’t really designed to be used for cases where you need exact layout.
My advice would be that if you need control over exact printable layout, you copy the Agenda note content out to another app like Pages, and work with that. Note that you can also add Pages documents to Agenda, and in the upcoming Agenda 14, you will even be able to edit the pages documents directly, and save back in to Agenda.
This is an issue for me too. It’s a huge timesaver writing in Agenda and then exporting direct to pdf. I do this for short proposal and reports - but the poor placement of a page break can make the resulting document look ugly and unprofessional. (The basic pdf output looks great!)
Would it be possible to ‘simply’ ensure that headings always stay with the following paragraph - ie if the page break would normally fall right after a heading, the heading starts on the next page? That would pretty much solve the problem for me.
We’l have a look what can be done, but as drew says, it can become a huge time sync for what’s not really the purpose of the app. Perhaps down the line shortcut workflows in combination with an app like Pages might be a solution.
I quite understand that you have to prioritise. But I do think the use case of exporting documents that look as good in a pdf as they do on screen is very close to Agenda’s core purpose:
“You focus on the meaning of your notes, and leave Agenda to handle the appearance.” (Agenda.com)
I absolutely love writing in Agenda. I love not getting distracted by heading sizes, fonts, line spacing and all the rest. Exporting to Pages is a real pain and wastes so much time - the very antithesis of Agenda.
I completely accept that for documents that need complex formatting and layout exporting to Pages is the way to go.
But for a straightforward report, proposal etc it would be so helpful if the pdf export had simple page break rules so documents look as good in pdf as they do in the app:
“Due to its clean and crisp minimalistic design, Agenda allows you to focus on your notes, making them feel as if printed on paper.” (Agenda.com)
Page breaks insert for pdf or before major headings style is definitely the real game changer when exporting.
Having this would allow me to share my work with no pain with others.
Thanks,
Francesco
But for a straightforward report, proposal etc it would be so helpful if the pdf export had simple page break rules so documents look as good in pdf as they do in the app
The problem is, where should the page break go, we don’t want/can include “page break” markers that show in the text, so it has to be some automated way (mind you, in the app there’s no concept of pages, so we don’t have to bother about fitting things to a page).
Adding one after each heading might sound an easy option, but could easily result in pages that have 5 lines of text and the rest of the page empty, think we’ll get even more complaints about that if we would do that.